


Defiant

by MaggieFromTexas



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Leaves the Jedi Order, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Anakin morphs into Space Indiana Jones for a little bit, Angst, Dark Anakin Skywalker, Disaster Lineage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Morally Grey Characters, Obi-Wan Kenobi Gets a Hug, Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Bad At Feelings, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Obi-Wan Kenobi is Trying, Obikin is OTP, Past Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Space Opera, no beta we die like men, obikin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:46:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27722315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaggieFromTexas/pseuds/MaggieFromTexas
Summary: Anakin makes one small choice that changes the course of his (and the galaxy's) destiny.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker & Quinlan Vos, CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, CT-7567 | Rex & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Quinlan Vos, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 36
Kudos: 166





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enter Anakin's angsty 19 year old self, stage left.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own Star Wars or any of the affiliated media. Unfortunately, the corporate demon known as Disney does. (Honestly, George, what was you thinkinnn?)
> 
> Author’s Note: I’ve been reading a lot of SW fanfic, mostly Obikin (cuz, duh?) and there’s not enough fics that mostly focus on Anakin’s development or introspection from his point of view. This fic was also inspired by the hate that Anakin got from the writers of the Trilogy-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named (*cough*Abrams*cough). The entire fucking saga revolves around Anakin and how his choices affect the galaxy, so this is a fic that will focus on Anakin’s character development, keep the deep, emotional relationships Anakin has (even if the nature of the relationships change), while still being both tragic and a wonderful story that stays true to the spirit of Anakin. Yeah, some of it is gonna be OOC – this is an AU fanfic, the characters are going to face situations they didn’t in canon, and I can’t guarantee they’ll react the same way you think they’d react or the same way Lucas would’ve written them reacting. I plan to stay as in-character as possible, but reserve the right to take creative liberties, like any good fanfic author. I can’t promise regular updates (re: my other work fic which is updated haphazardly), but there is an outline with a clear direction and finalized ending point. However, even with irregular updates ahead, I do promise to put out quality writing with semi-long chapters for anyone who actually reads this hunk of junk. Stay safe out there, wear a mask, stay hydrated!

**Chapter Note:** I’ve shortened the age difference between Obi-Wan and Anakin from sixteen to nine years, with their birth years being 50 BBY and 41 BBY, respectively. Also, yes, I’ve given Anakin’s childhood a bit of an AU makeover. I did try to realistically write what I thought a Force sensitive slave would go through during his childhood.

 **Song:** [Nightmares – All Time Low](https://youtu.be/sRM1JO2OG1Q). The [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1cMeGVZvk75Bh61t7TQZun) will be updated as the story goes (I have some naughties bangerz planned, it'll be sweet). Come bitch at me about it on Tumblr ([trashpanda26](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/trashpanda26)).

** CHAPTER ONE**

_22 BBY_

Anakin awoke violently, panting into the silent night air of his room at the Temple.

He tried in vain to get his breathing under control, a voice remarkably like his Master’s, recognizable in a far-off part of his tremulous mind, was reciting the Code in a familiar attempt to regain some kind of equilibrium.

All he could see, all he could focus on, was the scene taken from his dreams that replayed over and over again in his mind. His mother, _his mother_ , tied up in a canvas tent, sand stained red at her feet, with her back torn open and Sand People surrounding her. He could faintly hear the sound of lashes coming down on flesh and the Sand People’s chittering, muted as if listening to it through water.

 _It's just a nightmare_ he pleaded with himself _. It’s not real_ he desperately thought. 

Except it didn’t feel like a dream. No, this terrifying scene had the distinct tang, the cold bite of the Force grasping the edges of it. He was familiar with these kinds of Force visions but what they now showed him was both different and horrifying.

He spent the first decade of his life on Tatooine. He knew the fate that awaited those unlucky enough to be captured and not killed by the Sand People. It was always worse for women.

 _His mother_ …

He turned to the side and vomited. 

After a few minutes of dry heaving, Anakin wiped his mouth and somewhat succeeded in getting his breathing under control. On autopilot, he got up and started cleaning the mess he made next to his bed, using some fabric scraps usually saved for wiping the grease off his hands to wipe the floor. After he tossed the soiled rags into the bin, he put his hands on the wall, leaning his weight on them, and let his head hang down between his shoulders in an attempt to settle his mind. He wasn’t successful.

As he stood there, with his forearms braced against his bedroom wall, he still couldn’t get the image of his mother, beaten and bloody out of his head. He was glad he was alone right now, no audience to see or feel the anguish that was no doubt rippling in the Force around him. He’d react violently to anyone telling him to release his feelings into the Force, no doubt.

He slowly made his way to the ‘fresher, suddenly wanting a shower. Probably in a futile, subconscious attempt to scrub the images from his mind.

Tapping the hot water selection in the shower, he opted for scorching water instead of the sonic option. After the water heated up, he stepped into the cubicle, leaned against the wall and slowly slid down until he was curled around his legs on the floor, the blistering heat of the water barely anchoring him in the present.

Anakin was desperately trying to think around his panic without completely dissociating with reality around him. He didn’t want to fall back into a coping habit that he had devoted years of his life to training himself out of in. First with his mother’s help ( _don’t think about it_ ) and then quietly, by himself once he was taken to the Temple by Qui-Gon.

The first memories of his life were blurry, with large spans of time stitched together from a combination of the traumatic nature of being a slave owned by the Hutts and his young age.

What he did remember, he mostly wishes he didn’t.

His mother later told him that it was during one of the bleaker times of their residence at Gardulla’s palace that he started to “get lost in his head” as she put it. The first time that he can remember this happening was while he was in the middle of getting a particularly harsh whipping across his back due to some failing on his part that he was never able to recall. He remembered the feeling of dissociation as he fell into what he now knows was the Force, following the currents, eddies, and flows of the energy as it wove reality together around him, the violent pain in his back suddenly muted like it was already an echo of a faraway memory.

Falling into the Force soon became a way to escape the physical repercussions of being a slave on Tatooine. The Hutts were cruel masters, even among slavers. Slaves were chattel to them, treated like animals, kept penned together like Bantha in unsanitary and unsafe conditions with no relief for weeks sometimes.

As an adult, Anakin had the ability, in hindsight, to realize that his age had shielded him from the true horrors of life at Gardulla’s. The other children and himself were mainly tasked with cleaning up any debris that were left in the compound after events and kept in the slave quarters for the remainder of the day, usually with their mothers. Anakin could remember stealing scraps of metal and electronics when he wasn’t swiping and fixing broken tools, hiding his ill-gotten gains in a small hole he dug out with his bare hands under the thin little mat he had been given to sleep on, the one allowance from his owner.

While he had been beaten more times than he could count and definitely more times than he could remember, he knew that the adults had it much worse. He never went hungry for more than a few days, yet he could remember people dying of starvation feet away from him. He remembered men being beaten so badly that he could see the whites of their bones and hear the whistle of air wheezing out of punctured lungs as they labored in vain to breathe. He can distinctly remember the smell of rotting flesh. He remembered women being dragged out of their communal quarters, going without a sound, silent in their resignation.

He found out what exactly was happening when they came for his mother.

Needless to say, he found himself lost in the emotionless void that he had access to quite a lot during their last year at Gardulla’s.

When Gardulla lost Anakin and his mother to Watto over a bet, Anakin was terrified. All he had known was life at Gardulla’s and his anxious thoughts could only conclude that leaving what he had known would be bad, that Watto would be worse. He had heard other slaves mention that Gardulla was a far kinder master than many of their previous ones and Anakin was terrified that this Toydarian junk shop owner would be cut from the same cloth.

The Skywalkers’ first years at Watto’s were comparatively much kinder to them than their time at Gardulla’s. Watto let them stay in a small hovel in the slave quarters of Tatooine, away from the shop. He fed them sufficiently. His mother was never dragged out of their sleeping quarters in the middle of the night again. Anakin was able to refine his mechanical skills by fixing the electronics and droids in Watto’s shop, earning some small measure of leniency for his mother from his owner.

But they were still slaves. They didn’t own their own bodies. They couldn’t step foot outside of a certain radius from the shop where Watto kept the controllers for their slave chips for fear of literally being blown up.

They still got beat when they did something wrong. And Anakin, by that point, had outgrown whatever grace period most slaves had during their more vulnerable years that saved them from the more horrific beatings. Ten years later, the scars on his back were warped and ropey from growth spurts. No amount of bacta could fix the extent of the damage wrought from years of abuse.

But Anakin had endured it. He had no choice. The older he got, the more his world view expanded until he was able to understand his family’s place in the universe. And he grew resentful.

During this time, he continued to cope with the more severe beatings by dissociating and letting his consciousness go blessedly blank within the hold of the Force. This happened less often than it had at Gardulla’s, but as Anakin grew both in mind and body the effects that his chosen coping mechanism had changed as well.

The first time Anakin realized that “getting lost” in the Force might not be harmless was when he was seven years old. He was, at that time, keenly aware of his own lack of autonomy as a slave and was in the process of systematically testing the limits of Watto’s dominion over him. He was, for lack of a better term, rebelling, as much as could as a seven-year-old slave anyway. He had refused to fix some clunker droid that a moisture farmer had dropped off and mouthed off to Watto when the Toydarian warned him to hurry up. As Watto lashed his back again and again and again, the usual accompanying berating of Anakin took a new turn. Watto had threatened to sell Shmi back to the Hutts if Anakin continued his behavior.

Anakin’s mind was halfway out of his body by that point, falling into the Force had become almost instinctual by then. It also was probably the cause of the increasing frequency of beatings as he was able to escape the worst of the pain by mentally retreating and, thus, didn’t have an incentive not to be a seething ball of resentment and anger.

When Anakin heard Watto’s latest threat, he, as they say, lost it.

A wave of Force energy had rippled out around Anakin, shaking the foundation of the clay building that served as Watto’s junk shop. Watto himself was blasted away from Anakin and back against the wall, unable to do anything but give a shocked cry of surprise as bits of the ceiling rained down around them.

In the middle of it all was Anakin, crouched into a ball on the floor of the shop, with his hands wrapped around his legs in a vice grip as he struggled to control the explosion of unnamed energy that he could feel originate from within himself. He intuitively knew that if he lessened his mental hold on the energy, that he wouldn’t survive the fallout.

That was about the time that Watto came to his senses and flew across the room to club him over the head with a hydrospanner.

Anakin woke up in his own bed, confused and missing parts of his memory, with his mother pacing next to him worriedly. After she filled him in on what happened, she warned him that Watto had threatened to split them up by selling them to owners on different planets if that ever happened again.

Understandably, Anakin was terrified.

One good thing that came out of the whole ordeal was that Watto kept his distance from Anakin now. Instead of being treated like an unwanted nuisance who wasn’t particularly bright, the Toydarian was cautious around him, afraid of another outburst that might cause harm to him or his shop.

That’s not to say Watto suddenly stopped beating him for his failures. He still did, with the intensity increasing each year as Watto released his contempt for his slave the only way he knew how. He beat him horribly in silence instead of taunting him, always aware that Anakin was dangerous and knowing that his threats riled him up more than his violence against him.

For the last two years of his life on Tatooine, Shmi had made it her mission to help Anakin control the power he suddenly had access to. Every time his mind would find solace in the Force, he was slowly able to manipulate the energy that surrounded him. At first, it came in uncontrolled bursts but, over time, he was able to somewhat refine his control to the point where he stopped being afraid of spontaneously blowing up the building he was in. Anakin had his mother’s patience to thank for the welcome development. Shmi had taught her son a crude form of meditation that controlled his temper without causing him to slip into the Force. He probably wouldn’t have survived without her guidance, overwhelmed as his mother was with trying to help him.

However, yet another side effect of his affinity for the Force made itself evident during that time. At first, Anakin thought he was just having odd dreams about random events. Weird, yes, but not anything to worry about. Until he recognized his neighbor in one of the dreams, only his neighbor looked younger, face less wrinkled and without the grey hairs at her temples. He asked her about the events in the dream, with all the guilelessness of an eight-year-old who had no idea what tact was. She had listened to him, getting progressively more terrified as he recited his dream back to her, culminating in the door being shut in his face quite suddenly.

His mother eventually explained why she had reacted that way and Anakin learned to keep quiet about the indiscriminate visions of the past the Force gave him in his sleep.

The visions continued to come with increasing frequency during the last year that he lived on Tatooine. He had dreams about his mother, about men in brown and tan robes that he didn’t know, about a city that covered the land as far as his eyes could see.

Everything and nothing changed when Master Qui-Gon walked into Watto’s shop.

The few days that the Jedi was in Mos Espa were a blur of adrenaline, elation, and fear in Anakin’s memories. He had made his first friend, Padme, and learned about the Jedi. He recognized the giant of a man from one of his dreams but didn’t say anything, too enraptured with the way the Force was concentrated in his new houseguest.

All too soon he was clutching his mother as hard as his nine-year-old body could, trying uselessly to stop the tears from running down his face.

He remembered meeting his future Master quite clearly, though. Obi-Wan was a beacon in the Force. Anakin’s quiet fixation with Obi-Wan started in that Nubian cruiser as he watched the 18-year-old help Qui-Gon from where he was sprawled on the floor in exhaustion after facing off with the Zabrak. Obi-Wan’s less-than-enthused reaction to learning about Anakin hadn’t discouraged him at all.

In fact, Obi-Wan’s early dismissal just set the foundation for Anakin’s future habit of doing anything to gain his Master’s attention even after Obi-Wan warmed up to him following Qui-Gon’s death and taking him on as his own padawan.

For all that Anakin was fascinated with his new Master, he was still skittish. It took years for Anakin to really believe that he was free and that the Jedi were actually different from the slavers on Tatooine. Anakin had bonded with Obi-Wan and had tested his limits with his new Master over and over again and was incredibly relieved to find corporal punishment wasn’t condoned by the Order.

However, by the time Anakin started to fully trust his Master, it was years after their meeting. Anakin had never revealed his early habit of Force immersion, a fact made easier by the lack of necessity of such a coping mechanism. Anakin had, somewhere along the way, made a decision to keep both the habit and the dream visions of the past to himself, a choice that he only somewhat changed as the years went on and Anakin told Obi-Wan about his visions in a vague, round about way. He believed he would have told his Master the entirety of his experience with them, but he could distinctly feel Obi-Wan’s uneasiness with the subject of Force visions, past or present. It wasn’t directed toward Anakin, more of a general foreboding feeling making small ripples in the Force surrounding his Master and in the threads of their training bond, but it was enough for Anakin to change the subject and avoid it in the future.

Meditating, though, wasn’t so easily sidestepped.

Anakin had quickly learned that the way the Jedi meditated would be essentially impossible for him to replicate on a consistent basis, particularly if they didn’t want the ancient Temple to collapse around them. The Jedi meditated through simultaneously keeping their consciousness within their physical bodies while also letting it wander into the force. An impractical aspiration for Anakin.

He tried to meditate for months in the privacy of his new room within the apartment he now shared with his Master, in the dead of night over and over again. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he concentrated, as soon as he started to fall into a meditative state, the Force would _pull_ on his consciousness. He was unable to resist, the Force so embedded within him. There was no way for him to achieve the halfway state that Jedi meditation was built around.

When Obi-Wan finally noticed the issue a few weeks into his apprenticeship, Anakin was at a loss to explain, unable to articulate his problem without spilling his secrets. After simply saying he just couldn’t meditate, Obi-Wan had looked at him for a long time, gaze thoughtful while simultaneously examining their newly forged training bond to see if he would be more transparent in his emotions. Eventually, his Master had sat him down and had Anakin try to follow Obi-Wan’s consciousness through the training bond while he meditated to make sure he had the concept down correctly.

Anakin was amazed at the difference between their experiences. Obi-Wan was able to feel the Force around him, enabling him to reach of peaceful, meditative state while still being aware of the physical world, including his body. It was completely different from the utter, and mostly jarring, separation between the physical and the ethereal that Anakin experienced up until that point. It was beautiful and peaceful and rejuvenating and so many other things that Anakin realized had been missing in his life so far.

And it was utterly unattainable for him to reach on his own.

He tried to hide the upset from his Master, though, looking back, he realizes that Obi-Wan must have realized something was going on, because he stopped pushing meditation so hard on his padawan after that. Instead, Obi-Wan would regularly have Anakin follow his own meditation, allowing him access to the tranquility of the Force without fear of damaging something or becoming lost in the flow of it. His Master became his anchor.

Unfortunately, as Anakin grew, the opportunities for such indulgences were few and far between. The older Anakin got, the more his prowess grew, in the Force and with a lightsaber, and the Council was more comfortable sending the pair of them out on mission after mission. The fact that they successfully completed almost all of their missions only exacerbated the situation, as they were constantly needed in far flung regions of the galaxy.

The frequent absences from the Temple in addition to his unusual upbringing caused Anakin to have very few friends or confidants in the Temple outside of his Master. When he was younger, he was ostracized, however unintentionally, by the other initiates and padawans due to both his young age for a padawan and his past outside of the Temple. As he grew older, his lack of personal connections within the Temple only served to make him apathetic towards the majority of the inhabitants, which didn’t exactly encourage any new friendships to form. 

As a result, Anakin was only really familiar with his Master’s friends from his own padawan days. Anakin wouldn’t admit it aloud but in the privacy of his own head, he acknowledged that he acted decidedly jealous anytime Obi-Wan spent any great amount of time with any of his friends instead of with him. This caused Anakin to sometimes clash with Obi-Wan’s many friends in the Temple due to the poor control of his emotions that was common amongst teenagers.

Anakin didn’t dislike all of Obi-Wan’s friends, however. Quinlan Vos was the exception, falling into an easy rapport with the young Anakin early on due to his easy-going personality. Vos didn’t berate Anakin for his un-Jedi like conduct like most of the other Masters in the Temple and he always made it a point to include Anakin in any conversations he had with Obi-Wan. Anakin noticed these actions and, in turn, made it a point to always try to be respectful of Vos. The fact that it made Obi-Wan happy was a nice side effect that had nothing to do with Anakin’s decision to play nice.

Altogether, Anakin was essentially isolated from Temple life in general. He had his Master who always tried to accommodate him, but Anakin knew that the last few years had resulted in a gap where there was once harmony between them. Their bond reflected the distance, the threads connecting them having a distinct melancholy tinge to them that had grown stronger over the last year.

Curled up on the floor of the shower, with the hot water pouring over him, Anakin was at a loss on what his next step should be. He desperately wished he could confide in his Master. He wanted to reach out within the bond and beg Obi-Wan for some kind of reassurance, but the act reeked of childishness and attachment.

He stayed there, unmoving, and tried not to pay attention the tears that fell down his face to mix with the water.

~~

His master found him hours later, standing in front of the transparisteel panel that took up the majority of the back wall of their apartment in the Temple. Hands clasped behind his back, feet spread apart, and with his hair still damp from the shower, his gaze was lazily focused on the silhouette of the skyscrapers that made up the upper levels of Coruscant through the thick fog of pollution that plagued the planet.

Anakin had used his time alone to think about what he saw. He was convinced that the image his nightmare showed him wasn’t the distant past. The Force held a distinct sense of urgency whenever he concentrated on the dream. However, he wasn’t sure if it was the recent past or possibly even the present or, even more unlikely, the future. He had never had visions of the present or the future, but he felt that he would know, the Force would tell him, if his mother were already dead. And he wasn’t deluding himself, his mother would die if she were truly abducted by the Sand People. Most people would welcome death after such an ordeal.

So, if the scene were recent or in the near future, like he suspected, he needed to figure out how to stop it.

His first thought was to just make haste for the hangar in the Temple and commandeer a light speed capable craft and head straight for Tatooine. There were several issues with that problem, however. The first, and most easily bypassed, was that the hangar was locked and only accessible to Knights and Masters with their individual clearance codes. Anakin could splice into the system and be seated in a transport within five minutes. However, living in a Temple of Force users came with a surprising number of drawbacks. One of them was the inability to sneak about anywhere. Jedi patrolled the sprawling Temple at regular intervals and were always attuned to anything that was going on in the halls when they were on duty. The hangar had its own dedicated guard on top of the regular ones in the Temple.

Anakin was also weary of so openly defying both the Council and his Master by absconding in the night with only a maybe-vision to guide his way. He knew if he tried to explain his actions after the fact, that he very well may be kicked out of the Temple for serious violations of the Code. Obi-Wan would be upset with him and might even go so far as to repudiate him as a padawan. By going after his mother to save her from a fate that she might not face, from their point of view, would constitute a breach of the Code. The act would be a shining example of attachment and its pitfalls.

Whatever he decided to do, Anakin knew that he had to try talking to his Master first. He was holding out hope that his Master would be lenient with him in this respect. He had known his mother’s care and love for nine years before joining the Temple, it would be cruel to expect Anakin to ignore such a warning. Or so Anakin hoped Obi-Wan thought.

He could hear his Master shuffle out of his room, footsteps heavier than normal on the carpet from sleepiness. He sensed more than heard his Master take notice of him and make his way over to stand next to him. The bond, previously muted and fuzzy from drowsiness on his Master’s end, slowly sharpened as his Master examined Anakin’s own end of the bond and found anxiety, fear, determination, and resolution behind the façade of calm serenity he was trying to project behind his weak mental shields.

“What has you up this early, my young padawan?” his Master asked, voice quiet and hoarse.

“Dreams,” Anakin replied. “I had a vision” he confided unsurely.

Obi-Wan hummed consideringly before replying, “What did you see that drove you out of bed at this hour?”

Breathing in audibly, Anakin took a chance and decided to be transparent with his Master, something that he was out of practice with, “I saw my mother,” he almost whispered. “She was being tortured, in a hut, surrounded by Sand People” he confessed, voice rising uncontrollably as he revealed the scene that he couldn’t get out of his head since he saw it in his nightmares. 

“She was dying,” he finished, voice somber.

He felt his Master’s shock at what he had just said through the bond. Obi-Wan raised his hand to rest it on his padawan’s shoulder as he turned to face him before replying, “I’m so sorry you had to see that Anakin.”

Obi-Wan looked back out of the window, falling silent for a few moments before replying, “I know you must be quite upset. I never knew my mother so I can’t imagine the depth of emotion you must be feeling. But padawan, you need to release these emotions into the Force in order to gain some objectivity about this.”

Anakin knew that his Master wasn’t being deliberately cruel, but he couldn’t help the flinch, both physically and in the Force, that Obi-Wan’s words caused. His Master no doubt felt it, as he gave Anakin a concerned look before once again facing the lightening Coruscant skyline.

“I’m sorry Anakin,” his Master apologized. “I know you’ve had experience with receiving Force visions in the past, what made you think that this is one of them?”

“The Force is wrapped around the edges of the images, Master. This was no regular nightmare, of that I’m sure,” Anakin answered. 

“You know that the future is always in motion, Anakin. Even if what you experienced was a vision, you cannot be certain that it will come to pass, my padawan,” Obi-Wan said gently. “We must all learn to let go of that which we fear to lose eventually,” he reminded the younger man.

Anakin knew that was his Master’s way of politely closing the subject. He also knew better than to push, especially if he didn’t want to waste his morning being lectured, yet again, on the Jedi Code. He tried to swallow around the hurt suddenly clogging his throat while he calmed his mind.

He reinforced his mental shielding without being too noticeable about it before answering, “You’re right, Master. I will try not to dwell on things I cannot change.”

Seemingly happy that his padawan’s issue was resolved, Obi-Wan squeezed Anakin’s shoulder before letting his hand drop. His Master turned around, making his way towards their small kitchen, asking over his shoulder, “Now, how about some tea?”

Anakin turned around and nodded absently at his Master’s query. As he sat down at the table, his mind was quite preoccupied, furiously turning over ways to evade his Master long enough to sneak out of the Temple and either rent a transport or pay somebody to take him to Tatooine. The more he thought about his vision, the more the Force seemed to whisper to him to hurry. He could feel it in his bones that he didn’t have enough time to bring his Master around to his point of view and the longer he sat there, the less he cared about the repercussions of essentially abandoning his post here at the Temple.

As his Master set down a steaming cup of tea in front of him, Anakin thanked him quietly. Silently he grieved over the lack of support from the one person that mattered most.

He was going to Tatooine one way or another. He just hoped he had something to come back to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Anakin, who hates sand, goes back to a planet that's made of the stuff. And he may or may not spontaneously combust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own Star Wars or any of the affiliated media. Unfortunately, the corporate demon known as Disney does. (Honestly, George, what was you thinkinnn?). 
> 
> Chapter Note: Y’all thought last chapter was angsty? Ha! Did y’all forget we’re dealing with Anakin Personification-of-Teenage-Mood-Swings Skywalker here? This chapter serves out a great deal of horror and anger for our favorite protagonist who likes to moonlight as an antagonist. This will have some canon divergence, but the results will be essentially the same as in canon. There is an OC that may or may not be reoccurring. Probably not, but I’ll leave the option open just in case. I also pulled some of the dialogue (particularly the convos on Tatooine) from the AotC script with small changes. This is a longggg chapter (~9k words), and I have no beta, so I’ll read through it again after posting and do some edits (edited 12/1).

**Song:** [Ocean – Goldfrapp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4KTU33UMkc). The [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1cMeGVZvk75Bh61t7TQZun) has been updated quite a bit (including those naughties bangerz I mentioned, and it IS sweet). Come bitch at me about it on Tumblr ([trashpanda26](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/trashpanda26)).

**CHAPTER TWO**

_22 BBY_

Anakin was sitting on top of his bed in his room, sprawled out, seemingly relaxed, as he tried to read the same sentence on the datapad in front of him for the fiftieth time. Most of his focus was going towards shielding both his intentions and his volatile mood from his Master in their training bond.

He had never been able to get the hang of the more complex shielding methods, which he was starting to realize was a serious misstep in his Force education. At the time, he had brushed off learning all but the basics due to a lack of desire for any barriers between his Master and himself. It was one of the first times he had admitted to himself that he wanted Obi-Wan’s presence, his attention, even within the sanctity of his own mind. 

Now, however, it presented quite the problem.

He was focusing so hard on maintaining a neutral, if not calm, presence in the Force that he almost missed the soft knock on his door. He startled, looking around as if to hide the evidence of his incriminating thoughts before catching the ridiculousness of the act and calming himself.

“Come in,” he called, hoping Obi-Wan couldn’t hear the way his voice was just a little bit higher than normal.

The door slid open to show his Master leaning against the wall right outside of the doorway with an arm held up to the side, bracing his weight.

Smiling at Anakin, Obi-Wan said, “I have to head down to the Archives and I except I’ll be down there for a while. You’ll be on your own for lunch today, padawan.”

Obi-Wan’s understated way of saying he was going to be taking the afternoon to indulge in his not-so-secret obsession with anything even tangentially related to history made Anakin smile.

“Sure, no problem, Master,” Anakin replied. “I haven’t almost burned our apartment down trying to make food in a few years, so I should be fine.”

The corner of Obi-Wan’s mouth came up as he remembered said incident, replying “I’m sure you’ll be fine. And it’s not like you can’t walk down to the refectory if you don’t feel like cooking anyway.”

“Yes, Master,” Anakin replied, “go on, I’ll be fine.”

Obi-Wan’s Coruscanti accented voice sounded distinctly amused as he replied, “I’m going. I’ll see you at dinner then, Anakin.”

Anakin just barely managed to make an affirmative sound in his throat in answer to his Master before Obi-Wan was turning around and shutting the door to Anakin’s room.

There were a few moments of silence while Anakin waited for his Master to leave the apartment before he picked up the datapad that was in his lap and threw it against the bed only to lower his head to his hands miserably. Now that his Master wasn’t near him, the anger and hurt he felt towards Obi-Wan rose to the surface, tasting bitter in his mouth.

Sometimes, he _really_ hated being a Jedi.

And that was the root of the problem. Jedi shouldn’t feel hate. Or anger or hurt or any emotion really. Not as deeply and as often as Anakin did. _And_ if they did find themselves struggling with emotions, Jedi were supposed to funnel the feelings into the Force, as if the Force were some kind of one-size-fits-all solution for any problem a Jedi faces.

But Anakin knew that it wasn’t. At least for him. The Force was actually the source of quite a few of the larger problems in his life.

Not that he wasn’t grateful for the Force or the ability to access it. He’d rather die a thousand times than to never know the energy that surrounded him, created him, and weaved the galaxy together.

He thought back to Obi-Wan’s callous dismissal of his dreams, the warnings the Force saw fit to give him, and wondered, not for the first time, why the Code seemed to constantly be in contention with the will of the Force.

Anakin tried to swallow down the burning anger he felt towards his Master. At least anger was easier to deal with than hurt.

Now that Obi-Wan was gone, Anakin realized how fortunate it was that his Master chose today to hole up in the Archives. Obi-Wan’s decision removed one large, red headed obstacle from his path.

He jumped off of his bed, in a rush to get what he needed and get out of the Temple so he could make his way to Tatooine. He kneeled down on the floor and reached under his bed for the small box he kept his credits in, left over from missions or the odd job he had taken to fix something over the years.

After counting the amount, he realized he just may have enough to buy his passage after all.

He shoved the credits in his pocket and started running around his room, grabbing what he would need for his short excursion. After had grabbed his ‘saber, boots and cloak, he hurried out of his room, eager to be gone already.

However, as he was just about to open the door and leave his shared apartment, the image of Obi-Wan coming home to an empty apartment with no explanation suddenly invaded his mind.

Obi-Wan wouldn’t know where he was or what he was doing. It would take him time to realize where he had gone and he would probably alert other Jedi to his absence in the meantime. Anakin didn’t want the Council knowing about this if they didn’t absolutely have to. A vain hope, he knew, considering the seriousness of what he was doing, but one that would be impossible if he didn’t leave _something_ , some kind of reassurance for Obi-Wan.

Anakin grabbed a few sheets of flimsi and wrote a quick note for his Master. He told him where he was going; that he couldn’t ignore the Force, what it was trying to tell him – that he had gotten these visions for a reason. He reassured his Master that he would have his comm unit with him in case any emergencies came up and that he would be back the day after next at the latest. And, lastly, he begged his Master not to alert the Council, at least until he came back and explained himself.

The note seemed inadequate. He was still angry and wished that he didn’t have to reduce himself to begging his Master for any kind of leniency when the man ignored him and his problems. At the same time, the note was so short that it was hard to visualize the extent of the violation his actions constituted. Violations against the Code, against the Jedi, against his Master.

Anakin stuck the note to Obi-Wan’s door, hoping that his Master wouldn’t find it until at least dinner time, giving him a few hours to make it off world and escape any chances of being found and brought back to the Temple.

Looking around the apartment he had shared with his Master for over a decade for what might be one of the last times, he turned sharply and headed out the door.

He didn’t have time to be conflicted about this.

~~

The first set back in his plan came when he was walking out of the Temple.

“Anakin!” Quinlan said, jogging over to him.

He bumped Anakin’s shoulder with his own as he finally caught up, asking him, “Where are you off too in such a hurry?”

Anakin cursed his luck. Of course, he’d have to run into the one person he’d feel bad about brushing off while in the middle of trying to sneak out of the Temple without alerting his Master. Why couldn’t he have run into Windu?

“Hey Quinlan,” Anakin said. “I’m just heading out to pick up some stuff for Obi-Wan” he answered, hoping that his lie would convince Quinlan to let him go without talking his ear off.

Apparently, Anakin’s lie had fallen short because the Jedi Master reached out and grabbed his elbow with a gloved hand, turning Anakin to face him before giving him a searching look.

“Now why would you try to feed me a bunch of Bantha shit like that?” he asked.

Anakin froze, at a loss for what to do or say.

“What’s going on Anakin? You feel… conflicted… and irritated? Which isn’t that abnormal for you, but you also seem to be really focused on something, which _is_ weird.”

 _Kriff_ , why didn’t he ever learn how to effectively shield? As soon as he got back, he was going to camp out in the Archives and finally fix this lack in his education.

 _If he was still a Jedi after this_ , he morosely reminded himself.

He was too distracted to come up with a believable lie, so he said, “Look Quinlan, I have to go do something. Something that Obi-Wan is probably going to be really upset about. Like really, furiously upset about. But I need to hurry. I left Obi-Wan a message, so he won’t worry too much.”

Just then, he felt another nudge from the Force, a silent plea to _hurry_.

He looked at Quinlan’s unreadable face and begged, “Please Quin, just let me go. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow at the absolute latest. I’ll be fine.”

Inhaling noisily, Quinlan turned his head and looked back out at the busting city scape around them before asking, “You promise you’re not going to go do something stupid, Anakin? I’d never forgive myself if I let you go and something happened. Not to mention, Obi-Wan would probably make a Quinlan shish kabob out of me if something _did_ happen to you and I could’ve stopped it.”

Suppressing a laugh at the image, Anakin relaxed, knowing that he’d convinced Quinlan not to march him back to Obi-Wan like a misbehaving youngling.

“Thanks Quin. And I promise, I’ll be fine. I just have to go check on something,” he said vaguely.

“Well you better hurry,” the older man said, “you have one hour before I tell Obi-Wan his padawan is running amok.”

“Six hours,” Anakin immediately bargained. “He’s in the Archives, so he wouldn’t notice until dinner time when he came back to the apartment, anyway.”

“Two,” Quinlan replied, unyielding. “That’s my final offer, kiddo.”

“Deal!” Anakin said. “Thank you, Quinlan!” he yelled, already running down the stairs of the Temple, eager to be on his way.

“Yeah, no problem kid. Let’s just hope Obi-Wan doesn’t decide to make a Quinlan shish kebob anyway,” he said, turning around and stepping into the shade of the Temple’s arches and disappearing from Anakin’s view.

 _Finally_ , Anakin thought, _time to get off of this cesspit of a planet_ , already feeling the tickle in the back of his throat that he had come to associate with the more crowded parts of particularly polluted planets, like Coruscant.

He ran as fast as he could to one of the transportation sectors that littered the district.

~~

The second setback came when he tried to find public transport that went to Tatooine.

The problem was that _there was no public transport to Tatooine_.

If he would’ve stopped to think about it, Anakin would have realized that Tatooine, being an Outer-Rim, dust ball of a planet controlled by the Hutts would not be a popular destination, particularly for the inhabitants of an Inner Core World like Coruscant.

Unfortunately, Anakin didn’t stop to think about it until the issue was staring him right in the face.

He paced up and down the pavement trying and failing to figure out what in the world he was going to do next. How was he going to get off the planet when there’s no _kriffing_ transports to Tatooine? He didn’t have the money to board a shuttle to any other world and hope he could get to Mos Espa from there. With his luck, he’d just end up stranded on a world like Nal Hutta of all places.

All of the sudden, he felt another nudge from the Force. This time it translated into a feeling of _look over there_.

Anakin looked and blinked in surprise at what he was seeing.

Halfway down the platform, he saw an electronic sign flashing the words “Pilot Needed for Transport to Corellia.”

Corellia wasn’t Tatooine, but it was a start.

And he wouldn't have to pay for it with his limited credit supply. 

Anakin walked up to the dilapidated ship, wondering why someone would need a pilot for this hunk of junk when they could easily find public transport to a popular planet like Corellia. He knocked on the door of the vessel and waited to see if this was something he could work with.

A male Zabrak quickly opened the door and, after looking both ways up and down the platform, quickly grabbed Anakin’s hand and pulled him into the ship before shutting it. Anakin didn’t feel any caution in the Force so the teenager was more bemused than agitated with the presumption.

“I’m guessing you saw the sign?” the Zabrak asked.

“Well, yes,” Anakin answered.

The Zabrak looked him up and down before replying, “You look a little young to know how to pilot lightspeed craft.”

Annoyed, Anakin replied, “Yeah, well your ship looks like it’s something out of the Old Republic.”

The Zabrak snorted before holding out his hand and introducing himself, “Name’s Gil. Gil Harend. And this rundown old beast is called the _Hammer_.”

“Luca Vos,” Anakin replied, trying to suppress a snort at the thought of Quinlan finding out about this particular bit of subterfuge.

“So, you feel like you can get this thing to Corellia?” Gil asked.

“Sure, but I’d need to check over the ship, especially the hyperdrive, before I could say for certain. Not to mention, we haven’t talked about my price yet. Or if I’m even going to agree to this,” Anakin reminded the strange Zabrak.

“Go ahead and start checking everything out boy. I have to drop off a package off at one of the regional governor’s offices, that’s it, so the pay won’t be great” Gil said.

“Hmm,” Anakin hummed, “I came here today trying to find transport to Tatooine. Would you be willing to rent out your ship for a side-trip to Mos Espa after you’re finished on Corellia?”

“Getting to Tatooine will cost a lot of credits in fuel. I’m not sure it’s worth it just to get someone to pilot this thing a few systems over,” the Zabrak said, not unkindly.

Anakin was starting to panic. He felt the walls closing in on him the longer he talked to Gil and realized that this was his only shot at getting off this planet. He wrung his mind for ideas, some kind of counteroffer to present to Gil’s point about fuel prices before he remembered the credits in his pocket.

“I can pay for the fuel to get us from Corellia to Tatooine and back here,” he offered.

Now it was the Zabrak’s turn to hum while he considered Anakin’s offer.

Eventually, he asked, “How long would we have to stay on Tatooine for? I’m not interested in staying in Hutt space for longer than I have to.”

“Just a few hours, less than a day at the absolute most,” Anakin replied hurriedly, feeling optimistic about his chances of finally getting to Tatooine suddenly.

“And you’ll pay for the fuel and pilot the ship the whole way?” Gil double checked.

“Absolutely,” Anakin answered, voice bright.

“You’ve got yourself a deal, boy,” Gil finally relented. “Come in and check on the engine and the hyperdrive so we can get out of here already.”

“Sure thing,” Anakin said, making his way into the interior of the ship to do just that.

Anakin couldn’t believe how lucky he was. It didn’t matter that the fuel to get from Corellia to Tatooine and back to Coruscant would wipe out almost ten years’ worth of savings, he was actually going to be able to pull this off. Up until that moment, Anakin had been almost convinced that there was no way he was going to be able to get off of Coruscant and all the way to Tatooine on his own. He had never done something this risky, alone, before.

He silently reminded himself that he wasn’t off of Coruscant, yet.

After checking everything over, Anakin made his way to the pilot’s seat and sat down next to Gil. He looked over at the Zabrak, gratefulness and suspicion swirling in his gut, but unable to do anything but take the chance that had been handed to him with cautious hope.

~~

Corellia was as breathtaking as it always is.

Having spent most of his time between a dessert planet and city planet, any world that had even a miniscule amount of greenery was always mesmerizing to Anakin. Usually, when he got to see those kinds of planets, he was with his Master on some mission, usually diplomatic in nature, and didn’t have time to sightsee.

He wished it were Obi-Wan sitting next to him instead of the strange Zabrak.

His Master would be returning to their apartment any minute if he hadn’t already. Anakin wondered how long it would take him to find the flimsi note. How long would it take him to realize what Anakin had done? Would he comm Anakin? Would he report his absence to the Council?

Anakin thought about all the possible repercussions to his decision as he made the jump to hyperspace and looked out at the streaking of the stars before him.

He told his traveling companion he was going to the guest quarters of the ship to try and get some rest during the few hours of travel time they had left.

As he laid down on the thin mat that was masquerading as a mattress, Anakin attempted to calm his mind enough to fall asleep. He wasn’t very successful. Instead, Anakin’s mind whirled with the all the possible ways this self-assigned mission could still go wrong. He hadn’t let himself think too far ahead, only concerning himself with getting to Tatooine, but now that that had been taken care of, Anakin realized how many things could still go wrong.

What would he do if Watto’s shop was no longer in the same place? Mos Espa wasn’t that big, but he only had a limited time planet side and he didn’t want to waste it chasing down his former owner. Even worse, what if Watto had sold his mother? He had no idea how he would find his mother if she had been sold.

On and on his mind went, catastrophizing at a particularly impressive pace.

He must have dozed off because the next thing he was aware of was the ship lurching as they came out of light speed. Anakin quickly made his way back to the front of the ship and took his seat next to Gil who was more than amenable to giving the controls back to his hired pilot.

Ahead of them was Tatooine, it’s dull brown-orange color causing Anakin to feel anxious about setting foot on this planet again after nearly a decade of being free from it. As he locked the entry vector in the computer to safely guide them to the surface, he couldn’t actually believe he was finally seeing his home planet after all this time. When he first left Tatooine to join the Order, he always thought the next time he would set his eyes on the planet would be when he came back to free the slaves. To free his mother.

It's almost painful how much he wishes that were why he was here.

He piloted the ancient freighter to the one hanger bay that looked to be outside of the Hutt’s control. They didn’t have the extra credits to pay for the so called “protection fees” that the Hutts extorted from off-worlders.

He turned to Gil and, in the most serious voice he could muster, told him, “Stay in the freighter, don’t open the doors for anyone. I’m going to go pay for our docking fee,” quickly, he wrote the frequency for his comm unit on a spare piece of flimsi and handed it to the Zabrak before continuing, “If anyone gives you any trouble, comm me and I’ll get back here as soon as I can.”

“How long do you think you’re gonna need out here, Vos?” Gil asked, looking around with a nervous expression on his face, “I hate Hutt space,” he quietly complained.

“I’m hoping no more than 12 hours, at the most. I just have to go check in on someone really quick, so it should be much sooner,” Anakin reassured him.

“12 hours and, if I don’t hear from you, I’m leaving your ass on this dust ball, Vos,” Gil said.

Anakin thanked the Force that he had had the forethought to only put enough fuel in to get them from Corellia to Tatooine with the intention of filling up again once they were on Tatooine. If he had gotten all their fuel in Corellia, Anakin had the impression that Gil would’ve stranded him here, deal or no deal, after seeing Mos Espa up close.

“Sure, Gil. I’m going to head out now. The sooner I get out of here, the sooner I get back and we can leave this place.”

Seemingly against his better judgement, Gil called out, “Be careful out there boy!” just as the door to the ship slid shut.

The first thing Anakin felt was the scorching, dry heat. The second was the wind, whipping his robes around his wrists and ankles. The third, however, was the sand, already finding its way into the inside of his robes thanks to the harsh gusts of wind.

He _hated_ sand.

Drawing in a deep breath, Anakin tried, uselessly, to center himself in the Force.

He quickly made his way to the station where the hanger manager was set up at, paying for a day of docking fees before swiftly making his way out of the building and into Mos Espa itself. Luckily, the hangar was only a few minutes walking distance from the sector of the small city he remembered Watto’s shop being at, so he set off immediately.

As he turned around the corner of the cantina, Anakin’s sense of dread ratcheted up yet another notch. No matter how fast he went, no matter how quickly he acted, he couldn’t outrun the pervasive sense of doom that originated within himself. So, when he finally made it to the familiar junk shop, he was taken by surprise by the amount of resentment he felt at having to come all the way here for information about his mother from his former owner. Reduced to begging for any kind of help from the creature who had beat him and enjoyed it.

The anxiety and rage he was feeling was so potent it was nauseating.

He tried to keep the black emotions out of his voice as he addressed Watto but by the way the Toydarian jumped when he heard Anakin’s question, spoken in Huttese that was rough from disuse, he was unsuccessful.

“What?!” the ugly blue creature asked.

“I said excuse me,” Anakin replied bitingly.

“What? What can I do for you?” Watto asked, before continuing, “You look like a Jedi,” he said, taking notice of Anakin’s long brown robes and darker cloak.

“Mhmm,” Anakin hummed in reply before getting to the point of why he was there, “I’m looking for Shmi Skywalker.”

At his mother’s name, Watto stopped messing with the broken droid in his arms and actually seemed to realize who was in his store after giving him a thorough once-over.

“Ani? Little Ani?” Watto asked, almost fearfully.

When his former owner looked like he was about to start spewing some Bantha shit, Anakin forcefully reminded Watto why he was here, “My mother…?”

Watto audibly swallowed before replying, “Oh yeah, Shmi… she’s not mine anymore. I sold her.”

“Sold her?” Anakin asked, voice icy. He had been terrified that this would happen. How in the Sith hells was he going to be able to track her down now?

Hands slightly shaking, Watto put the droid down on the bench in front of him as he said, “Years ago. Sorry Ani, but you know, business is business. Sold her to a moisture farmer named Lars. Believe it or not, I heard he freed her and married her!”

Biting back the first five sarcastic replies he wanted to scream at Watto, he tried to keep his voice even as he asked, “Do you know where they are?”

“Long way from here, on the other side of Mos Eisley, I think,” Watto answered.

Anakin was feeling extremely conflicted, it was hard to keep his mind on the conversation going on in front of him. On one hand, his mother had been sold, like an animal, yet again. This time to a man who did Force knew what to her. Yet, if Watto was to be believed, which is doubtful, he had freed her. But Anakin knew that just because her new owner said she had been freed, that the reality of the situation could be much different. He didn’t know what to think about the possibility of this moisture farmer _marrying_ his mother. _One crisis at a time_ , he chastised himself.

He hadn’t seen his mother in ten years. He had no idea what her life was like, what she had been doing, how she had been treated. He wanted to scream at the Toydarian in front of him for inconveniencing him, for owning him, for selling his mother, and for every other slight he had borne under this clay roof.

Instead, he simply said, “I’d like to know where she is.”

Watto, disgrace for a sentient that he was, was not particularly stupid, so he made a motion toward the back of the shop, saying, “Yeah… absolutely. Let’s go look in my records.”

~~

Anakin was running back to the hangar that held Gil and the _Hammer_.

The salt flat that the Lars homestead was located at was in the middle of the Jundland Wastes, which was approximately 3 hours from Mos Espa if one was traveling by speeder. Anakin didn’t have three hours. He felt like he didn’t have _three minutes_. So, instead of tracking down a rental bike and wasting three hours traversing the Wastes between here and the Lars’ farm, he was returning to the ship in hopes that Gil wouldn’t mind a little detour.

Considering Gil’s apprehension towards the Hutts, Anakin figured it was a safe bet. No one but the Jawas and Sand People cared much about the Wastes. And the rare moisture farmer of course.

The mystery of just _why_ his mother was being tortured by Sand People in his vision had been solved when he saw just where the Lars farm was located. The Sand People thought that all water was theirs, by some kind of divine right, and a woman living with a moisture farmer would be a prime target for them, insulted as they probably were with the idea of moisture farmers in their territory. 

He used the Force to open the door of the ship and came to a sudden stop as Gil, in his surprise, brought a blaster to his forehead before realizing who it was.

“ _Kriff_ , boy. I almost blew your brains out,” Gil cried out as he hastily lowered the blaster and collapsed back into the co-pilot’s chair.

“Sorry about that,” Anakin said hastily, already turning on the ship’s navigation and programming in the coordinates for the Lars homestead.

“What are you doing?” Gil asked, “Did you find whoever you were looking for?”

“Not exactly,” Anakin hedged.

“Wait, those aren’t coordinates to get us into orbit, where are we going?!” Gil asked, panicked.

“Just a small detour about half an hour west of here,” Anakin said.

“This was not what I agreed to. You couldn’t have asked me first? It’s my ship!” was the testy response from the Zabrak.

Anakin swallowed down his initial answer, completely aware that, while he might be piloting the ship, he wasn’t exactly in charge here. Trying to placate his companion he said, “I’m sorry, Gil, I’m just in a bit of a hurry. The place is close by and it’s outside of the Hutt’s influence!”

Gil gave a little snort and replied, “Well, that’s something at least. Now, tell me where we’re going, boy.”

Letting out a relieved sigh, Anakin started to explain, “I just found out the person I’m looking for moved out to the Wastes, a moisture farm to be exact. I didn’t know until just now.”

Gil turned to him and with furrowed brows asked, “Who is it you’re looking for?”

“My mother,” Anakin replied solemnly.

The rest of the trip was made in silence.

~~

Anakin’s sense of dread was increasing once again, to the point where he was barely able to force himself to stay in his seat instead of getting up and pacing like he wanted to. After what felt like an eternity, the small domed structure that must have been the Lars farm was visible on the horizon. As the ship made its way towards the low standing white house, Anakin turned to Gil and thought about how to handle the situation. He had no idea what would be waiting for him at the Lars’ farm, so he thought it was probably best if they thought he had come alone.

“Gil,” Anakin started, “stay in the ship while we’re here, I’ve never met these people,” he said before adding, “unless the Sand People or the Jawas some and try to tear the ship apart. Even then, I’d just take off and circle around before coming back.”

The Zabrak looked at him like he was a little crazy but eventually nodded.

By the time Anakin had finished his impromptu warning, they had arrived at the run-down looking moisture farm. The structure looked like it could use a good scrubbing and some major repair work, but that could pretty much be said about everything on this sand-infested planet.

As Anakin disembarked from the ship, he looked up and saw something he wasn’t prepared to see.

Threepio, the droid he had only halfway finished, was outside working on an evaporator. The sight of the droid he had stolen parts for, received beatings to upgrade the littlest portions of, and had left with his mother in a vain attempt to make her life easier suddenly made everything very _real_ for Anakin in a way that it wasn’t before this moment.

It only took a moment for Threepio to realize that someone was there and hobbled over to say, “Good evening. May I help you?”

“Threepio,” Anakin said, “it’s nice to see you again.”

Anakin wondered if droids could go into shock or if he had just programmed a defective droid as Threepio exclaimed “Oh my! Master Anakin! My goodness, I can hardly believe it!”

“I’ve come to see my mother,” Anakin said, futilely, already knowing, _feeling_ , that she wasn’t here. 

“Oh my, oh dear. I’m so terribly sorry Master Ani,” Threepio said sadly before continuing, “I think we had better go inside.”

As Anakin followed his old droid inside the outer walls that made up the homestead, Threepio called out, “Master Lars! Master Owen! There is somebody here to see you!”

A moment after Threepio’s call, two people, a young man and a woman about his age came out of one of the hallways and made their way over to him.

“I’m Anakin Skywalker and I’m here looking for my mother,” he said, straight to the point.

“Owen Lars,” the main said, “I guess I’m your step-brother. This is my girlfriend, Beru,” he said, motioning over the woman by his side.

As Anakin and Beru nodded to each other, Anakin said, “My mother’s not here, is she? She hasn’t been here for some time.”

A new voice answered his question, “No, she’s not and she hasn’t been here for almost a month.”

As the new man. Cliegg Lars, introduced himself and explained what happened to his mother, Anakin could barely process it. His ears were ringing. Everything felt strange, as if his movements, his thoughts, were slowed down as if moving through water. He had never felt like this before in his entire life and it was scaring him.

When he couldn’t take those feelings anymore, he suddenly stood up, uncaring about interrupting whatever story the old man was telling him. He had to _move_ , had to get out of here and start looking. _Now_.

“Where are you going?” Owen asked.

“To find my mother,” Anakin said, unable to recognize the sound of his own voice.

Cliegg looked at him with something akin to pity in his eyes as he said “She’s dead, son. Accept it.”

“You don’t understand! None of you understand! I’ve been having dreams, _nightmares_ , about this. Visions sent to me by the Force in warning. They only started recently. She’s alive! I can feel it!” he shouted.

The family that his mother was apparently a part of now just looked at him, eyebrows furrowed in a similar way between the three of them.

“I _will_ find her. I know she’s alive,” Anakin stated with a confidence he didn’t feel right at that moment.

He turned and made his way out of the Lars’ home, feeling like he was going to burst from all the conflicting emotions within himself. He wanted to rage at them for their lack of faith, for getting his mother abducted, for not searching hard enough. He wanted to break down and sob because he hadn’t seen his mother in ten years, and he might not ever see her again. He wanted to throw himself off of the cliffs that dotted the Wastes in self-flagellation for not getting here sooner, for not knowing that it had been a month since his mother was taken.

He suddenly thought about his Master with a fierce sense of longing. Anakin could really use some kind of stabilizing influence right this second, even if said influence was probably mad enough to get him kicked out of the Order right about now.

Thinking about Obi-Wan was almost as good as having the man right here next to him. As soon as he thought about how Obi-Wan would deal with this situation, he was able to find a sense of equilibrium that had eluded him for the majority of the trip so far.

He had reached the outside of the house by that point and took a deep breath as he gazed out on to the Wastes, already thinking about how he was going to go about searching for his mother. He had about nine hours, give or take before his self-imposed time limit was up. He didn’t particularly want to get stranded here for Force knows how long. Obi-Wan would definitely pitch a fit if he didn’t get back to the Temple within 24 hours.

He heard Owen jogging towards him, eventually coming to stand next to him, asking “You’re really going to go into the Wastes? By yourself?”

“Yes,” Anakin said with no hesitation. “My mother is out there, alone. I’m a Jedi. There’s not much out there that can harm me.”

Owen seemed to process this before offering, “Take my speeder then. It’ll be easier to search with the speeder than with the ship you have.”

Knowing that Owen had a point, Anakin agreed and quietly thanked his newfound stepbrother before sending a comm message to Gil letting him know what he was doing. After getting an affirmative back with a reminder about the time, Anakin swung his body into the dilapidated speeder and took off into the dessert, hoping that he wasn’t too late.

~~

Anakin didn’t know how long he had been driving this speeder.

Realistically, he knew it couldn’t have been more than two or three hours, but as he went farther out into the Wastes, with only the unchanging desert and his spinning thoughts in his head, it seemed like an eternity.

He had no guide to go on except the Force and it was pulling him in a straight line to a place he wasn’t sure he wanted to find while needing to be there already more than he had needed anything in his entire life.

Anakin had been pushing the speeder to its limits as it was. The thing, like all things on Tatooine, was worn down and had probably been patched up ten times already. While a Jedi might not have much to fear from the beings that make the Wastes their home, all humans needed water and food eventually. He was no different. And he would be without those two essential things if his speeder were to break down in the middle of nowhere. He doubted he would make it back to the Lars’ on foot before something happened to him, Jedi training or not.

Suddenly, Anakin felt yet another nudge in the Force and made a sharp left turn, keenly aware of the multiple life forms that he could just begin to sense. As he traveled, he wondered what he was going to do once he made it to the village. It was dusk, so he was hoping to sneak in, unseen, and sneak back out with his mother before the Sand People could realize he was there.

It was a bad plan and he knew it. His Master was usually the one who made the actual plans.

As soon as he could see the encampment, Anakin pulled his borrowed speeder behind a rock formation and ran as fast as his training would allow and as quietly as he could manage until he was standing in the shadow of the temporary dwelling that was the farthest from the center of the grouping. He cast out his senses, trying to pinpoint the location where they were keeping his mother while desperately trying to control the black rage he could feel building up inside of him as he felt the imprint of pain and suffering that was left on the land by the Sand People’s depraved acts.

He furiously tried not to focus on one particular thread of agony that was achingly familiar to him.

After just a few seconds of searching, he had located where his mother was being kept. Slowly, he crept towards the hut that was, thankfully, not too far from his starting point, using the shadows to hide his large frame and billowing robes. He slipped inside the dwelling and immediately smelled the old familiar smell of rotting flesh that he had, somehow, thought he had blessedly forgotten after all the years of being free from Gardulla’s slave pens.

He turned around and saw a nightmare come to life.

His mother, _his mother_ , was tied a post, facing forward, with her entire back side exposed, the weeping tissue of her back rotting from lash wounds left to fester. She had tracks of blood running down her back, to her legs and eventually to gather around her feet in the sand, and he gagged as he thought about what else the blood was probably from.

The ringing in his ears was back. Worse this time.

His body moved automatically to unshackle his mother from the post, trying his best to ease her down without aggravating the wounds on her back any more than he absolutely had to. He gathered her in his arms and pulled her close to his body in a macabre reversal of all the times she had held him and comforted him as a child.

He blinked stupidly as he saw drops of water falling on his mother’s face. Then he realized he was crying.

“Mom… Mom…” he cried quietly, silently urging her to consciousness with the barest hint of the Force.

Eyes rolling as they opened, she asked weakly, “Ani? Is that you?”

Watching intently as her eyes finally focused on him, he held her closer as he answered, “I’m here, Mom. Hang on… just hang on. I’m going to get you out of here in just a second.”

His mother didn’t seem to process what he was trying to tell her, gasping out, “I’m… so glad… that I got to see you… Ani….”

He could feel his heart beating furiously, his desperation so potent that it was physically choking him as he begged “Just stay with me, Mom… I’m going to fix this. We’ll get out of here. Everything’s going to be fine.”

His mother’s answer was to give him a pain filled, bloody smile. He could feel each consecutive breath get shallower as she somehow found the strength to tell him, “My grown-up son… I’m so proud of you, Ani. I missed you so much… I love you.”

As soon as she finished the last word of her sentence, Anakin felt his mother go limp in his arms and fail to take another breath. He was shocked into stillness, which was the only way that two of the Sand People were able to make it all the way inside of the tent before Anakin was aware of them.

With the coverings on their face, he couldn’t see their shock, but he felt it in the Force around them.

The hiss of his lightsaber was the only sound in the silence of the hut. He hadn’t even realized he had stood up much less drawn his weapon. He felt like he wasn’t in control of his own body. Except he was, and he was filled with so much rage and hate and a brutal kind of grief that he was drowning in it.

The heads of the two males dropped at his feet. 

Abruptly he felt like he had stepped into an open current of electricity and was barely containing the energy inside his body. He felt like he should be smoking, burning from the inside, his body felt molten.

That’s when he felt his mother’s life force finally leave her body and join the Force, a quiet whisper in the back of his mind that left a void of silence in its wake.

 _No_ , Anakin thought.

The silence suddenly exploded into a cacophony of sound as Force energy rushed out of him in a wave, detonating with all the ferocity of a proton bomb.

As the Force wreaked havoc around him as far as he could see, Anakin realized, distantly, he had lost control of his hold on the Force for the first time in over a decade.

And the results were disastrous, the energy catastrophic in its devastation now that he’d had ten years of Jedi training that honed and consolidated his power.

He looked down and realized that the only area of the camp that was spared was the interior of the hut.

Anakin couldn’t feel any life from the bodies strewn around him, tossed around like ragdolls from the impact of the explosion, limbs askew and bodies broken.

Knees buckling, Anakin whispered into the night with only corpses to hear him utter a quiet, “Oh”

He fell forward and threw up, heaving for another endless stretch of time as his mind began to process what had just happened.

Eventually, Anakin made himself get up. _He wasn’t done here_ , he reminded himself. He searched the area for a blanket to wrap his mother’s body in. As he carefully wrapped her body in the rough linen, he resolutely did not think about the fact that he was going to have to ride for hours in a speeder with his mother’s _body_ instead of _his mother_. He didn’t think he could take it if he let those thoughts run to their inevitable conclusion.

Instead, he made himself gather up all the corpses of the children and burn them, refusing to let their bodies become even more desecrated by scavengers after what he had already done to them.

He vomited again when he smelled the burning flesh, collapsing onto the ground and letting out a savage yell that did nothing to quell the self-hatred and fury still screaming through his veins.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, but he knew that he had to head back now. He couldn’t summon up any real need to get back to the Lars and Gil and back home to Coruscant. It didn’t feel like it mattered. Nothing felt like it mattered right now.

Except he could still feel the wound in the Force around him, made worse by his accidental massacre, and he suddenly found he couldn’t stay here for a second longer.

As he lifted his mother’s body into the speeder with an aching sort of care, Anakin didn’t look back at the evidence of the carnage he left behind.

~~

Eventually, Anakin made it back to the Lars’ homestead.

If someone were to ask him how he made it back, he would’ve been unable to give them a coherent answer. He left the village and suddenly he was at the farm, that was all that he remembered from the journey.

It was the early morning, the first sun not yet risen, by the time he made it back, so there was no one outside waiting for him, no droid, no maybe-step-family there to see Anakin’s blank face as he carried Shmi’s body to the side of the domed building and gently laid her on the sand.

He carefully cleared out a space in the ground to be his mother’s resting place, holding the top layer of sand back with the Force while he simultaneously removing the clay from the ground. As he methodically worked, focusing on the precision needed to accomplish two things at once, especially with such a substance like sand, he let his mind stay blessedly blank until the Lars’ presence finally registered in his mind.

They had come outside sometime during his digging. He hadn’t noticed.

When he looked around, he noticed the grimness of their faces and thanked the Force that he didn’t have to explain what had happened. Most people on Tatooine had a practical approach to death, living in a place as inhospitable as this one. Anakin thought that living in the luxury of the Temple at Coruscant had made him forget the importance of a lesson he had thought long learned.

It was silent as he levitated his mother’s body into the grave he had created. He walked over to the side and gathered up a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers to gently fall on the linen that covered his mother’s body. He distantly felt Cliegg, then Owen and Beru, do the same. After they had finished the ritual, Anakin once again used the Force to move the clay and sand, to finally bury his mother.

He looked at the covered body of the woman who had given birth to him, that had shielded him from the horrors of life as child slave, who had been his first guide in the Force, who had gone hungry to make sure he didn’t starve and who told him to go with Qui-Gon when he now knew she had probably wanted desperately for him to stay with her.

He was surprised to feel himself crying. He thought he had no more tears left to give, he felt so wrung out from this trip, from the desert, from _everything_.

Not bothering to wipe his face, he turned to look at his mother’s husband and his family. They were good people, he thought. They didn’t deserve to have him bring back a body instead of a person. They didn’t deserve a rushed funeral and him running out on them like he was about to.

“I can’t stay any longer,” Anakin finally spoke, “I have to go.”

Cliegg looked at him, his own eyes red and puffy before saying, “Of course, Anakin. You probably have to get back to your Jedi stuff, yeah?” he asked.

Anakin just nodded, not bothering to go into detail about the deal he had made with Gil, who the Lars had no idea was probably sleeping in the ship right outside of the house.

“I’ll try to come back. She would’ve wanted me to get to know you all,” Anakin suddenly said.

“We’d like that,” Owen replied, voice hoarse.

“You should take Threepio with you,” Cliegg stated, “He was your mother’s, you built him for her. You should be the one to have him now that she’s gone.”

Anakin tried to ignore the lump in his throat as he thought about Threepio and why he created him. When he was finally able to speak, he said, “Sure, I’ll take him.”

Beru silently left, presumably to go get the droid as Anakin knelt down next to his mother’s grave and just stared, unable to come up with any prayers or pleas or silent requests to whatever higher powers he could think of or even to the Force itself.

He got up when he heard Threepio shuffling towards him, mood considerably dimmed from his normal default state of obnoxious chattering. Beru must have told him what had happened.

Anakin quietly said his goodbyes to the Lars and made his way to the ship, Threepio shuffling in the sand behind him. As they got to the door of the ship, he warned Threepio about their guest, including the alias he had given himself, and let him inside.

He didn’t look back at the farm, or the Lars, or his mother’s grave.

~~

He found Gil asleep in one of the bunks when he got in the ship.

Deciding that he really didn’t want to deal with anyone at the moment, considering the way he was feeling and what he was distinctly trying _not_ to feel, he went ahead and started the pre-flight checks and put in a vector to get off the surface and out of the planet’s gravity well while Threepio familiarized himself with the ship silently, intuitively knowing that now was not the time for conversation.

Everything was silent aboard the _Hammer_ for a long while. He was just starting to finalize the calculations for the jump to lightspeed when Gil finally made his appearance.

Gil took one look at him and realized something was very _wrong_ , he could feel the awareness of it in the Force.

Instead of talking, Gil just nodded to him and gave a funny look to Threepio before making himself some insta-caf and sitting down at his usual chair next to Anakin.

After spending a few minutes in silence together, looking at the brilliant streaks of white from the stars that cut through the black of hyperspace, Gil finally asked, “Did you find her?”

“Yes,” Anakin said bleakly.

“I’m sorry, Vos,” Gil simply said.

Anakin could feel the surprising sincerity of Gil’s words. Unable, and unwilling, to continue on with their current line of conversation, he asked, “You never told me why you were looking for a pilot.”

Gil gave him a sideways glance before shrugging his shoulders and replying, “Well, I can’t really fly.”

Anakin could feel the half-truthfulness of the statement and pushed, “Why do you have this ship then?”

Seemingly nervous, Gil admitted, “Well, I mean… I can fly. It’s just I... I get nervous. I’m a bit superstitious. The droid at the health center said it was some kind of anxiety disorder, but the medicine made me all kinds of loopy, so I stopped taking it and just stopped flying myself places if I got one of those feelings.”

Anakin blinked at the surprising statement before asking “And you had ‘one of those feelings’ today?”

“Yup,” Gil said simply.

“You ever think that being an interplanetary courier might not have been the best career move for someone who doesn’t like to fly?” he asked sarcastically.

“Every single day of my life,” Gil fervently.

Amused against his will, Anakin decided to leave Gil alone about his flying aversion, the Zabrak reminding him, fondly, of his own Master’s disinclination for flying.

He thought about what he was going to do when he got back to Coruscant and the amusement that had warmed him seconds ago sputtered out and left him cold and anxious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that Anakin got to Shmi ahead of canon, but I wanted to keep her death in this story because I felt it was one of the defining factors in canon!Anakin’s character development and had repercussions that will be useful in the future for this story. I feel like Shmi was honestly hanging on until she could see her son one last time, that was the entire emotion that made up her will to survive the Sand People’s torture. So, even though she’s spent less time being tortured, she still dies after she sees Anakin, since that was the one thing causing her to hold onto life. I know that Anakin’s reaction to her death is not exactly in character, as he didn’t murder all of the Tusken’s in cold blood, but he still murdered some of them and was the ultimate cause of death for all of them, even if he didn’t butcher them with his light saber. I wanted to strike a happy medium of authentic reaction of a super powerful space wizard that just saw his mom die and nineteen-year-old kid who isn’t already a half Sith. Honestly, the real driving force for the change was that I didn’t know how to reconcile canon!Anakin’s massacre with my Obi-Wan finding out what happens eventually, so I changed it up a bit.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chapter in which Anakin does NOT puke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own Star Wars or any of the affiliated media. Unfortunately, the corporate demon known as Disney does. (Honestly, George, what was you thinkinnn?). 
> 
> Chapter Note: We start out with a little bit of Obi-Wan POV for all my Obi-Wan lovers. I love Obi too, but this is an Anakin centric fic, and like 75-80% of the POVs are gonna be Anakin’s. Good news is that Obi-Wan will make up about 20-ish% of the rest of them! Now, we get to the fallout of Anakin’s decision to sneak away to Tatooine. Did Obi-Wan tell the Council? Have a stroke after reading the note? Will Anakin deal with the death of mother in a healthy way, or in an Anakin way? Did Quinlan become a shish-ke-Quin? Stay tuned to find out.

**Song** : [Don’t Let Me Get Me – P!nk](https://youtu.be/K_t9AA3Z4PE). The [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1cMeGVZvk75Bh61t7TQZun) has been updated quite a bit (including those naughties bangerz I mentioned, and it IS sweet). Come bitch at me about it on Tumblr ([trashpanda26](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/trashpanda26)).

**CHAPTER THREE**

_22 BBY_

Obi-Wan was wrenched from his sleep by a surge of painful emotions screaming across the bond he shared with Anakin.

He had an uneasy feeling, unsure of what may have caused the emotions but able to make a good guess.

Already knowing that going back to sleep wasn’t an option, Obi-Wan sat up and sighed, dragging a hand down his face as he thought about his actions over the last 24 hours.

He felt sick as he realized he had told his padawan to ignore what turned out to be a very real warning that the Force had given him. He had no idea that the words he had said to his apprentice yesterday morning, told to him multiple times over the years by both Qui-Gon and Master Yoda, would cause so much grief to him today.

When he had seen Quinlan walk into the Archives with an unusually serious expression yesterday, Obi-Wan knew that _something_ had happened. He just never would have guessed the seriousness of it.

After listening to his oldest friend say that Anakin had left the Temple to places unknown and Quinlan hadn’t stopped him, Obi-Wan had been very tempted to stick his lightsaber somewhere Quinlan definitely wouldn’t appreciate.

He had abandoned his afternoon in the Archives, trying not to actually run back to the apartment to read this note that Anakin supposedly left for him. As soon as was inside, he ran his eyes over the place, searching for the note that Quinlan said Anakin had left. Maybe, if he hurried, he could use the bond to track down his padawan before he got into any real trouble.

That was when Quinlan saw fit to tell him that he had given his wayward apprentice a two-hour head start. Jedi weren’t supposed to give into urges to commit acts of physical violence, but by the Force, Quinlan was testing his dedication to _that_ particular oath.

Obi-Wan’s heart hurt when he finally found and read the note.

He could feel the urgency and desperation imprinted onto the thin sheets of flimsi. Obi-Wan should’ve known that their short conversation this morning hadn’t eased Anakin’s mind.

When he felt the anger and hurt that was also embedded in the note, Obi-Wan knew that his words, if anything, had pushed his padawan further away from him. He had given Anakin a callous, empty reassurance, in hindsight and Obi-Wan could feel the resentment it had caused bleeding from the note painfully grasped in his hands.

He then had tried, futilely, to figure out where Anakin was by opening the bond. It hadn’t worked. Anakin was long gone.

Eventually, Obi-Wan had accepted that there was nothing he could do at that point except trust that Anakin would come back.

He had sat down heavily on the utilitarian couch and let out a loud sigh, which seemed to signal to Quinlan that he wasn’t in danger of being skewered by a violently protective Obi-Wan, causing him to join Obi-Wan on the couch for a few moments of silence.

“What are you going to do?” Quinlan asked.

Letting out a loud sigh, Obi-Wan answered, “Wait for him.”

“You’re not going to, I don’t know, go track him down like some kind of overprotective mother hen and demand he come back?” Quinlan asked skeptically.

“Are you okay?” Quinlan wondered, putting a hand up to assure himself that Obi-Wan didn’t have the Corellian flu or something else that would explain why his friend was suddenly acting very out of character.

“I’m just fine Quinlan,” Obi-Wan absently reassured.

He handed the note to his friend and explained what had happened that morning.

“So, he had some kind of Force vision that made him think his mother was in danger. The mother who didn’t get freed along with Anakin when he was brought to the Temple all those years ago by Master Qui-Gon?” Quinlan asked.

Obi-Wan just nodded.

“And you told your teenaged apprentice, who has had a history of struggling with our way of life in addition to being familiar with Force visions that, basically, it was nothing to worry about?” Quinlan double-checked, incredulously.

“That’s the gist of it,” Obi-Wan answered morosely.

Quinlan let out a long, low whistle before replying, “Yeah, that might not have been the wisest way to address Anakin’s concerns.”

“Thank you for your illuminating advice, how ever would I have figured it out without your help?” was Obi-Wan’s biting reply.

After a few moments of sitting in silence, Obi-Wan finally came to a decision about how to handle Anakin’s actions.

“I’m going to give him the time he asked for before alerting the Council. If I haven’t heard from Anakin by then, I’ll have to go looking for him, which means I’ll have to tell them either way. I know that I should be reporting Anakin to the Council, regardless. But I just can’t do it. Not when I was so dismissive of his concerns. Maybe if I had taken him seriously, we could’ve gone together and Anakin wouldn’t be in a completely different system, alone, right now,” Obi-Wan said.

“That sounds like a plan,” Quinlan reassured him before asking, “Now, what do you have to drink in this dump?”

Obi-Wan spent the rest of the evening nursing his drink in silence, thankful for the silent support that his friend offered by simply making sure he wasn’t alone that night.

~~

The apartment was quiet as Obi-Wan shuffles out of his room.

He looked at the couch and saw Quinlan’s silhouette, fast asleep, struck by a surge of gratitude that his friend hadn’t left him alone last night.

Quinlan woke up as Obi-Wan put the kettle onto the heating element, both of them groggy and slightly hungover from the large amount of alcohol he had drank the night before.

Later, when they had finally sat down at the small table in the kitchen with steaming mugs in front of them, Quinlan broke the silence between them, asking, “Have you heard from him?”

Obi-Wan took a second before replying, “He hasn’t commed me. I did feel something from the bond, though.”

Quinlan’s eyebrows rose as he remarked, “You can feel him all the way from Tatooine?”

“He might not have been on Tatooine at that time,” Obi-Wan reminded his friend, “but not usually. Recently, the bond has been closed, on both our ends. Something happened to make Anakin feel a great deal of pain. So much so that the bond transmitted the emotions across lightyears of space.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Quinlan says, voice subdued.

“Not at all,” Obi-Wan agrees.

~~

Obi-Wan was meditating in the warm afternoon sunlight coming through the transparisteel panel of the apartment. 

Or, he was _trying_ to meditate, he thought as he gazed at the Coruscant skyline, letting his eyes skim over the thousands of speeders and transports he could just barely make out from his view in one of the Temple’s towers. After breakfast, Quinlan had gone back to his own apartment, leaving Obi-Wan to try and fill the time until his wayward apprentice decided to show back up. Obi-Wan being Obi-Wan thought that meditating was a perfectly acceptable, and probably helpful, way to spend the afternoon in order to get his thoughts together before Anakin returned.

However, every time he successfully relaxed enough to commune with the Force, all of his thoughts seemed to flow back to his padawan. Was Anakin okay? How did he get to Tatooine? Why didn’t he ask Obi-Wan to come with him?

He knew the last question was unfair. Anakin _had_ come to him with his worries but Obi-Wan had brushed him off, unthinkingly.

Obi-Wan couldn’t help it. He had dedicated the last ten years of his life to teaching Anakin, to watching his back, to protecting him, being there for him, Code or no Code, Obi-Wan _knew_ that he was attached to Anakin, for better or for worse. Not that he would ever admit it outside of his own mind.

So, he was understandably upset that his teenaged padawan was systems away on a planet he had been enslaved on. He was upset that his padawan’s mother had probably died. He didn’t want Anakin to have to go through that.

 _Force_ , Obi-Wan thought, _let him be alright_.

However, for all that Obi-Wan was worried about Anakin, he was undoubtedly mad at him.

This latest stunt was just another in a long line of reckless, unthinking acts that his padawan was often guilty of. From sneaking out of the Temple at night to street race to mouthing off to Council members and even going so far as to get caught with his pants around his ankles in some abandoned hallway or room no less than three times over the past five years, Obi-Wan was sure that at least 90% of the grey hair he had was a direct result of Anakin. He felt like he was at his wits end, how does one essentially corral a nineteen-year-old man-child who still hasn’t developed the ability to think more than five seconds into the future?

Obi-Wan was tired. He wondered if Qui-Gon ever felt like this with him in their later years. He knows that his old Master definitely had his reservations during the first few years of his apprenticeship, as much as it hurt to remember. Particularly after Melida/Daan.

He pushed those unwanted thoughts away and attempted to reach a peaceful meditative state for the tenth time that afternoon. Finally, after what felt like hours, he was able to let go of his worries, if only temporarily. He was comfortable, sitting on meditation mat in the warmth of the afternoon sun and he took a moment to bask in the pervasive feeling of contentedness that he always associated with meditating.

Finally, he decided to try to get some guidance from the Force on how to move forward with the situation that Anakin had put them in. As he concentrated on the feelings, the emotions, that his padawan’s actions caused, his shame at not having taken him more seriously, the Force gently swept those thoughts away. Instead the Force pushed him to look at the future, something that he did have a modicum of control over, at least considering his own actions, instead of ruminating on that which was already done.

Obi-Wan was mildly shocked when he did turn his attention the future. The Force around him felt inexplicably unburdened in a way that didn’t make sense to him, he had never felt anything like it before. It was the feeling of taking a long, deep breath after being underwater for a few seconds too long.

He didn’t understand it.

 _He didn’t have to understand it_ , Obi-Wan thought.

He let him mind bask in the relief of the Force around him, his own worries leaving him one by one as he realized it didn’t matter what he would say or what he would do when Anakin got back because, either way, Anakin would be back at his side, where he belonged.

~~

Obi-Wan sent Anakin a message as soon as he came out of his meditation.

The Force might have given him some sense of peace about the entire situation, but he still wasn’t exactly okay with his padawan being out in the galaxy, alone, with no idea of how he or where he was.

He had made himself yet another pot of tea while he waited for Anakin’s reply, pacing around their small kitchen and living room.

Obi-Wan nearly jumped out of his seat when his comm beeped, immediately grabbing it, and reading the message that Anakin had sent him.

He was back on Coruscant.

Obi-Wan felt his shoulders relaxing, an unknown tension easing out as he re-read Anakin’s message. His padawan had just landed and would be back at the Temple within the hour. That meant that, in the next few hours, Obi-Wan and Anakin would probably be in the middle of an argument over the whole situation, but Obi-Wan honestly couldn’t bring himself to care. He didn’t know why he was so worried, Anakin was an adult, no matter how often he chose not to act like one, and a powerful Jedi besides, he could take care of himself. He would be Knighted soon and then he would truly be on his own. Still, Obi-Wan worried, he couldn’t help it.

Before he knew it, the hour had passed Obi-Wan by, too wrapped up in his head to notice. He grabbed his outer cloak and made his way down to the Temple entrance, impatient to finally see Anakin with his own eyes.

~~

Anakin was sure he was supposed to be feeling anxious right about now.

The _Hammer_ had docked in a cheap hangar near the residential section and Gil was yelling at him to keep in touch as Anakin directed Threepio to the lower levels of the Temple before leisurely making his way toward the Temple.

He felt removed from his own body as his booted feet hit the concrete, he was only in control of his movements in the vaguest sense. Anakin didn’t want to come out of the fog he was in. That would mean he would have to deal with what he had just done and what he still had to do.

So, he didn’t think about Tatooine. He compartmentalized, as best as he could, and told himself that after today, after explaining himself to his Master, that he would never think about it again.

After he made that first decision, he suddenly didn’t feel as anxious about the upcoming confrontation with Obi-Wan. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen and, right now, Anakin felt removed enough from the situation to not really care too much. It seemed he had reached his emotional limit and he wondered if this is how all good Jedi felt, so removed from their emotions. If so, he could understand why they kept harping on releasing all of their emotions.

Distantly, Anakin realizes that this state of dissociation can’t last forever. He had only every felt this removed from himself when he immersed himself in the Force and suddenly experiencing the same phenomenon without the total separation from his physical senses is jarring. Or would be if he could properly process anything right now.

So, when the Temple inevitably comes into view, Anakin saunters up the steps without a care to what will most undoubtedly be an ugly fight with his Master in the very near future.

He sees Obi-Wan on the Temple steps and he _feels_ for the first time in hours.

Anakin couldn’t put a name to the roiling mess of emotions in his chest, all he can do is stare blankly at his Master, standing there looking through the crowd, seeming to search for him.

Eventually, Obi-Wan must see him, because he started making his way towards Anakin and Anakin moved, finally, meeting Obi-Wan halfway and then moving past him towards to the Temple, not wanting Obi-Wan to start lecturing him in the middle of the Temple entryway.

The walk back to their apartment is tense and silent. Anakin has no desire to begin the conversation and it seems that Obi-Wan is content to let things wait until they have some privacy.

As soon as the door shuts behind Obi-Wan, however, Anakin’s reprieve is over.

“What were you thinking?”

Anakin watched his Master impassively as Obi-Wan lost some of the composure the older Jedi held so dear.

“You take off for the Outer Rim, for Tatooine, with only a cryptic note for me and half of an explanation for Quinlan? And I wouldn’t even have had that if he hadn’t run into you as you were leaving!” his Master tore into him.

He doesn’t give Anakin a chance to reply even if he were inclined to, “Do you have any idea how stupid that was? You could’ve been killed or abducted, or a million other things between here and Tatooine! I don’t even want to get into how many violations your actions constituted. Do you _ever_ think before you act?”

Anakin doesn’t answer, afraid if he opens his mouth all the things he’s trying desperately to keep inside will come pouring out.

“Well,” his Master finally asked, “do you have an explanation for your actions, Anakin?”

“Nothing I could say would change anything, Master,” Anakin replies coolly.

“Force, Anakin! You can’t even act like you’re remorseful? You’ve put me in an incredibly difficult position. Why couldn’t you have just told me –“

“Shut up,” Anakin heard his own voice say, warped by fury he belatedly realized was flooding his chest, his head, his very being.

Obi-Wan turned to him, completely caught off guard by Anakin’s hostility after his earlier dispassion.

“What?” his Master asked, incredulous.

“I said shut up!” Anakin shouted.

“I did come to you, Master, or has your memory suddenly failed? I told you that I had a vision of her in pain, being tortured, dying! And do you know what your response was?” he asks cruelly.

His Master is still shocked silent and Anakin doesn’t wait for him to snap out of it, instead answering his own question in a farce of Obi-Wan’s voice, “’The future is always in motion’ ‘you need to gain some objectivity about his’ and, what was the last one? Oh, yes, ‘learn to let go of what we fear to lose,’ wasn’t it?”

Anakin is pacing, his long legs eating up the small distance between the walls of the apartment, chest heaving with everything he had tried not to think about, not to feel, earlier. His rage feels like a living thing, eating him from the inside out. There’s no room for hurt or for grief when he feels so full of the white-hot _fury-betrayal-anger_ that is suddenly pouring out of him.

“Anakin…” his Master started to say, but Anakin didn’t give him the opportunity to get another word in.

“My mother is dead,” Anakin said, his voice unrecognizable, “She died right in front of me. She was in agony, beaten and raped, with her wounds left to fester for weeks.”

He saw his Master blanch, his already pale face losing what color he had gained in his earlier tirade against Anakin.

“I should have been there faster!” he yells, “I should have left as soon as I woke up from that nightmare, that damned vision. Why would the Force give me a vision if I didn’t have the power to change it?” he rages. 

“You should have been with me! Why weren’t you with me?” his voice breaking as he asked.

“Anakin –“ Obi-Wan tried again, reaching for him.

“No!” Anakin yelled, and this time a rush of Force energy leaves him, pushing Obi-Wan and all the furniture near them away.

Anakin ignored the lapse of control, resuming his pacing and yelling, “You have no idea what I’ve just been through. Why do you have to be so critical? Why do you have to immediately point out every single mistake I make? Why can’t you, for once, just _understand_?”

“I knew that you wouldn’t have let me go,” Anakin said, stopping his movement, staring somewhere over Obi-Wan’s shoulder.

“As soon as you told me that my vision might not come to pass, I knew that you wouldn’t help me.”

“I am so sorry…”

“Don’t! Just save it. You have no idea what it’s like, what I’m feeling!” Anakin said.

“I’ve been living on Coruscant for ten years, never going hungry, never going without a bed to sleep in, never being beaten for something that wasn’t my fault, or at all! I was free,” he starts pacing as he starts to yell once again. “The entire time, my mother was still enslaved! The Jedi just left her there, she was of no use to them. _I_ left her there,” his voice was desolate as he uttered the last sentence, tears finally spilling down his face. 

“You have no idea what it’s like, to be owned, to have no agency over yourself from your very first moments. You, the Council, the initiates I had to take classes with, the Masters who judged me and found me lacking, you all have no idea what it was like to live as a slave –“

“You’re wrong,” Obi-Wan finally said.

Anakin was too surprised at the interruption to reply, so Obi-Wan continued, “I do know what it’s like – to be a slave.”

Anakin felt his eyes widen at his Master’s confession.

“I failed out as an initiate. No one wanted me for a padawan, they said my temper was out of control,” he divulged, the irony not lost on either of them, “I was sent to Bandomeer, to the Agri-Corps, to be a farmer like all the other failed initiates. Eventually, I got sucked into a conspiracy that was going on there. Master Qui-Gon’s previous padawan that had left the Order was trying to exploit the resources of the planet. I was eventually captured, and they put me with the slaves they had working in the offshore mines, collared like the rest of them,” Obi-Wan tells him.

It took a second for Anakin to process what his Master told him, and he’s all the more angry for what he heard, the attempt to equate their experiences, even as he felt contradictorily, absurdly happy that his Master had actually told him something about his past for once. 

“And how was it, Obi-Wan? How was your short time in chains? Was it awful? Did you have nightmares about it? Did you leave your mother behind when you were free? No?” He asks ruthlessly, determined not to ask his Master about Bandomeer, ignoring the metaphorical hand that his Master had reached out to him. He didn’t have it in him to be nice right now.

“A few weeks in a mining colony is a world away from nearly ten years on Tatooine. And most of those were with the Hutts before Watto got ahold us. But the Jedi didn’t really care, did they? The little slave boy from Tatooine was a nuisance, a problem, his past something to be swept under the rug like a dirty little secret. ‘Can’t have the Chosen One more compromised than he already is for living outside of the Temple, now can we?’” his voice is a mockery of the Coruscanti accents common of the Jedi.

“My mother was only one more complication for the Jedi, for your precious Council,” he spits out, “I couldn’t even write to her. Ten years of silence only for a handful of rushed, gasped words as my mother bled out on the sand, and you would have had me not even have that,” he finally finishes, no more fight, no more emotion left in him.

Anakin was just done. He was suddenly tired and all too aware of the sand and blood and Force knows what else that was caked on his skin and his robes.

When Obi-Wan didn’t say anything, Anakin turned around made his way towards his room, needing to get away.

“Wait!” Obi-Wan tries to stop him.

Anakin’s answer is to shut the door in his face.

~~

Obi-Wan was staring at the door his padawan just disappeared behind, wondering how everything got so out of hand.

He had mentally planned out how the conversation was going to go. He would let Anakin know that he was glad he was back, even though what he did was reckless, and ask him what had happened, because _obviously_ something had happened.

Instead, he may have just destroyed whatever trust Anakin might have had left in him.

The boy just frustrated him so much. He acted without thinking, with no thought to his own safety. No thought to how others were affected by his actions. Too rash, too emotional, too _attached_.

 _Still_ , he thinks, _that was no excuse for what just happened_.

He had lost control of himself; it was as simple as that. As much as Anakin liked to think he was the perfect, emotionless Jedi, Obi-Wan knew that he was far from it. Telling Anakin about Bandomeer had brought all _those_ memories to the forefront of his mind after over a decade of pointedly _not thinking about it_.

He shouldn’t have started out the conversation by scolding his padawan, he realizes in hindsight. His mistakes so obvious now that he’s alone in the living room of his apartment.

Suddenly, Obi-Wan couldn’t take the stillness, the silence, that lays between them. He made his way to Anakin’s door, not bothering to try to open it or even knock, knowing that his presence isn’t wanted but still needing to talk to his padawan, to try to apologize.

“Anakin,” he said, staring at the grey metal door, “I’m sorry.”

Once he started, he found he couldn’t stop apologizing, “I’m sorry that I brushed you off when you confided in me about your nightmares. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry that you had to watch your mother die. I’m so sorry that she’s dead, Anakin. I’m sorry for yelling at you when you got back, but I was just so worried.” 

There’s no answer, not that Obi-Wan thought he would get one.

~~

Obi-Wan doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the emotions that bled through the bond as Anakin yelled at him.

He knows he should release these emotions, the _shame-guilt-frustration_ into the Force. Move past it, focus on the present and let go of the past.

Except Obi-Wan finds he can’t. And not for the first time in his life either. Meditation is no help. It seemed that he was stuck with these unwanted feelings for the night, at the least.

Instead, Obi-Wan makes himself a pot of tea and sits at the kitchen table, wondering where he went wrong. Or, rather, when everything started going wrong.

He knew that he wasn’t ready for a padawan when he took Anakin on. He felt both obligated by and resentful of his Master’s last words, his request for him to train the boy. Qui-Gon had all but thrown him away in his single-minded pursuit to train Anakin. Obi-Wan knew he was ready for the Trials at the time but what should have been a happy occasion was tainted by the belief that his Master wasn’t suggesting he be Knighted because Obi-Wan was ready but because he already had his next padawan lined up.

Obi-Wan had tried not to let his resentment affect how he treated Anakin and, for the most part, Obi-Wan thought he was successful. For all that he felt obligated to fulfill Qui-Gon’s last order and angry over it, Obi-Wan didn’t hold any of that against the boy. He knew the boy had been a slave and hadn’t asked for any of this. Anakin had, in fact, been the reason why Naboo’s resistance against the Trade Federation’s invasion had been successful, twice over. 

After the way Anakin had raged at him, had expressed his own resentment of Obi-Wan just moments ago, he knows that he’s failed his padawan more deeply than he had ever thought. He feels the echo of his padawan’s anguish that had leaked through the bond even now.

Every Master fails their padawan at some point during the apprenticeship. Failing is part of being a sentient and Obi-Wan is only human after all. He was so young when Anakin became his padawan. Obi-Wan knew even then he would undoubtedly fail Anakin in some ways. In the back of his mind, he had perpetually compared himself to his own Master, always feeling that Qui-Gon would’ve been able to guide Anakin better than Obi-Wan ever could.

The feeling of not measuring up had faded over the years as Anakin finally stopped pushing at Obi-Wan’s boundaries and settled into Temple life. He had started to _trust_ Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan knew that it was a gift, that he had to protect Anakin because Anakin had no one else, he had to earn that trust everyday for the rest of Anakin’s apprenticeship.

Today is the first time he feels truly unworthy of it.

He knew that he had let Anakin get away with more than most Masters would. He didn’t want to be as distant as Qui-Gon was to him. Qui-Gon’s early disdain was always in the back of his mind, even after the man was killed by the Sith on Naboo.

Anakin’s personality was infectious. When he was happy everyone around him was too. Anakin had made those first few years bearable for Obi-Wan in a way he doesn’t think anyone else could have been able to. Anakin had been a reason to get up and keep going even when he felt like disappearing in between the sheets of his bed and never moving again.

So what if he didn’t curb Anakin’s enthusiasm for pod-racing or everything electronic? So what if he didn’t discourage Anakin exuberance for trying new things? He knew how the other initiates and junior padawans treated Anakin, why should he have taken his padawan’s few sources of joy away?

What he should’ve been doing was attempting to help Anakin control his emotions.

Obi-Wan knew he was out of his depth. He had been raised at the Temple; he couldn’t even remember whatever life he had had before he was brought to Coruscant. He had no idea how to begin to understand his padawan’s own emotions except knowing that he experienced them much more keenly than other Jedi. Anakin’s emotions _had_ caused the Council to doubt if training him was the right course. He should’ve known that something like that couldn’t be ignored or lectured out of Anakin.

He had the sneaking suspicion that the depth and breadth of Anakin’s feelings were influenced by his equally deep connection to the Force, but there was no way to prove it and, even if it were true, how would that help him? It would only confirm that Anakin would always have trouble controlling himself.

Obi-Wan was tired of the self-flagellation his thoughts had turned into.

Instead of thinking about his failures, Obi-Wan watched the sun make its descent through the haze of pollution.

It could have been minutes or hours later when he hears Anakin’s door slide open.

He doesn’t turn around to look at his padawan as he slowly makes his way towards where Obi-Wan is sitting, cross-legged on the floor looking out into the Coruscant night. Instead, Obi-Wan waits until Anakin sits next to him and reaches out to wrap his arm around Anakin’s shoulders, pulling him into his side.

Anakin is stiff at first and Obi-Wan thinks maybe he’s read the situation wrong and Anakin doesn’t want any physical contact at the moment.

Instead, Anakin takes a shuddering breath before his shoulders gently start to shake, his sorrow crashing through the bond and leaving Obi-Wan breathless.

He doesn’t say anything as Anakin’s tears soak through his robes at his shoulder. Instead, he just brings his other arm around and holds his padawan tighter.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Anakin is very much caught between denial and anger. Which means he gets his freak on, of course (obligatory smut warning).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own Star Wars or any of the affiliated media. Unfortunately, the corporate demon known as Disney does. (Honestly, George, what was you thinkinnn?). 
> 
> Chapter Note: Y’all! I just finished my undergrad degree! And Taylor Swift announced a new surprise album (that’ll be dropped already by the time y’all read this) outta fucking nowhere! AND Disney (officially) announced the Obi-Wan Kenobi show AND AND AND both Ewan and Hayden will be reprising their roles! Holy cow talk about an eventful couple of days!! So y’all get a nice update (and the first smut scene of this story and my fanfic career) while I bask in contentedness and try to ignore that I only have like 4 weeks off before grad school starts! Happy holidays, too, btw! A lot of the dialogue was taken from AotC, but not all of it. This is honestly just smut and lip service to get through AotC so we can move on to the AU plot. I have no idea how this chapter got to over 12k words, but here it is. I’ll go back and do a grammar check when I’m not falling asleep at my computer.

**Song:**[Harder to Breathe – Maroon 5.](https://youtu.be/rV8NHsmVMPE)The [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1cMeGVZvk75Bh61t7TQZun) has been updated quite a bit. You can bitch at me about it on Tumblr ([trashpanda26](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/trashpanda26)).

**CHAPTER FOUR**

_22 BBY_

The day Anakin got back from Tatooine was the last time he had spoken to Obi-Wan.

That was four days ago.

For the most part, Anakin had holed himself up in his room, only coming out once a day to eat when he couldn’t ignore his stomach anymore.

The morning after their confrontation, Anakin had woken up early to make a trip to the Archives before his Master woke up. He hadn’t forgotten about the trouble his lack of mental shielding had nearly gotten him into. If it had been anyone else besides Quinlan that had caught him on the Temple steps that day…. Well, Anakin didn’t want to think about what would’ve happened.

So, he had made his way to the Archives and had nearly given Master Nu a heart attack at not only seeing someone so early in the morning but seeing _him_ , of all people, that early in the morning.

Now, Anakin knew he wasn’t the most studious Jedi in the Temple, but the shock on Master Nu’s face was just _insulting_.

Trying to ignore the blow to his ego, Anakin had quickly made his way to the section on mental force techniques that he needed. It had taken him a minute to find the datapads that covered shielding. He was caught off guard by the amount of information available on both the particular subject he was looking for and mental force techniques, in general. Knowing what the lack of information about the more subtle force powers had resulted in, Anakin was quite interested in the secrets and knowledge, the power, he could gain just from this section. But he only had a short window of time to get what he needed and get back to his room before Obi-Wan woke up and tried to track him down.

There was nothing he wanted to say to his Master. Honestly, he didn’t really have anything to say to anyone at this point in time. He just wished everyone would leave him alone. He was afraid of what he would say when somebody pushed him and, living here for the past ten years, he knew somebody would push him to talk about it, sometime. He was just so angry; he knew he wouldn’t be able to control the vitriol that was guaranteed to come spilling out of his mouth.

 _If only I had left sooner… If only Obi-Wan had believed me… If only I had actually gone back for her… If only the Jedi would’ve let me go back_ …

An endless stream of impossibilities constantly clouded Anakin’s mind.

 _No_ , he told himself, _don’t think about it_.

Which was exactly why he decided to actually do some research of his own into ways to mentally shield his mind. Both from the connection between him and Obi-Wan and from the more adept Jedi Masters that had no sense of privacy when it came to other’s feelings. Anakin just wished that he had more time to explore the larger-than-he-expected section on mental force techniques. Would it have made a difference? Was there something in the Archives that could teach him to focus his irregular visions? Or even explain why he had them in the first place?

Anakin had to mentally shake himself and expend a great deal of effort not to turn around and head right back to the Archives, Obi-Wan and Master Nu be damned. So, instead, he employed a rare bit of self-restraint and made a mental note to come back to this section of the Archives after he had shored up his knowledge on mental shields and wasn’t trying to avoid everyone.

Thus, Anakin began his reading binge, devouring a quarter of the Archive’s information on mental shielding that he was able to get away with considering Master Nu was one second away from interrogating Anakin on just what he was doing there that early.

He had never been considered studious, but Anakin knew that he possessed an inherent ability to be single-minded in his pursuit of anything that he wanted or was interested in. And right now, he was interested in protecting the only true bit of privacy he possessed in his own mind.

However, even his stubbornness eventually burned out. It didn’t help that he had blown through all the datapads he had taken from the Archives by the fourth morning of his self-imposed exile to his bedroom. By then, even Anakin was having some trouble staring at the same four walls for days. The grey matte color that was ubiquitous in the Temple was driving him crazy. By the fourth day, he felt like crawling out of his skin he was so uncomfortable. Even doing katas in the small space of his room couldn’t distract him by then. Trying to meditate his anxiety away wasn’t even worth mentioning.

He also had things he had to do – including making sure Threepio actually made it to the lower levels of the Temple in one piece (which was honestly an oversight on Anakin’s part not to check up on him earlier, considering the droid’s innate obnoxiousness and the likelihood that he would end up in about 10 different dangerous scenarios just traversing the distance between Gil’s ship and the Temple).

The real reason, though, that Anakin broke down and finally left his room to risk being in public was the message he had received from the Chancellor.

Anakin counted the Chancellor as one the people closest to him. Chancellor Palpatine had been kind to him as a nine-year-old, probably due to the fact that Anakin had just inadvertently saved his home planet when he blew up the ship that controlled the Trade Federation’s droid army. He was probably the only politician, other than Padme, that he actually thought governed with the people’s best interest in mind, untainted by the greed that ran rampant throughout the Galactic Senate.

Over the years, the Chancellor had periodically taken time out of his schedule to ask Anakin to accompany him to certain functions or even just to sit in his office and catch up. The Chancellor had, at first, wanted to get to know the odd Jedi padawan that was so central to the Naboo Crisis. After a few months of being invited to sit with the Chancellor’s retinue during meetings with various Senators going over legislation that had bored him to distraction, Chancellor Palpatine had noted Anakin’s disinterest in politics and, instead, started asking Anakin to accompany him to some of his less public outings or just to come and talk to him whenever Anakin wanted to.

Anakin had been able to see some of the greatest museums and collections on the planet thanks to the Chancellor. Not that he was overly interested in art or history, but the exhibits on mechanics always seemed to steal his attention when he was younger. Anakin was mostly just happy that someone other than his Master seemed to enjoy spending time with him. That someone actually went out of their way to spend time with him was a novel concept. Obi-Wan was stuck with him, the older initiates at the Temple were resentful of him, the younger padawans were too old to hang out with him, and the adults either ignored him or looked at him with gazes far too scrutinizing to make Anakin comfortable. So, the Chancellor’s easy camaraderie was a boon for Anakin. He had never realized how terribly lonely he was at the Temple.

So, when the Chancellor sent him a message asking him if he had time to stop by his office, Anakin leapt at the opportunity to escape his self-made prison and actually talk to the one person who he wasn’t, in one way or another, a burden to.

~~

Anakin felt incredibly more centered as he made his way back to the Temple.

The short conversation he had had with the Chancellor had eased the hurt and tension that Anakin hadn’t even known he’d been carrying.

Anakin hadn’t planned on confiding the events of his mother’s death to his friend, but the Chancellor had eventually worked out something was wrong with him and had gently offered to listen to whatever was so obviously bothering Anakin.

In the face of that kind of kindness, Anakin had told him a very short version of what had happened in short, gasping sentences. He had told the Chancellor he had lost control of himself after he had found his mother tortured and dying. He left out just how the Force had exploded out from him, the feeling of which was still seared into his brain along with the images of the dead Sand People sprawled around him in a ring of destruction and rage unleashed. He didn’t want to burden the Chancellor with those kinds of mental images.

He had almost had a panic attack when he realized that he had essentially confessed to murder in front of the highest Republic official in the galaxy. Once the Chancellor had realized what was causing his anxiety, his friend was quick to reassure him that their conversations were always held in the strictest confidence and he wouldn’t even entertain the thought of punishing Anakin for acting the same way any normal person might when faced with such a grievous act and unbearable loss.

Anakin tried not to think about how differently the Council would react if he even told them half of what he had told the Chancellor.

Chancellor Palpatine had spent the last part of their meeting reassuring Anakin that he hadn’t just ruined his life by confiding to murder in front of the Chancellor of the Republic. He assured Anakin that, even if he wanted to turn Anakin in, which he most certainly didn’t, that Tatooine wasn’t part of the Republic’s jurisdiction, anyway, so Anakin was essentially safe from any kind of criminal penalties.

That had made Anakin feel extremely relieved. However, a small part of him felt uneasy for basically getting away with murder. He knew he wasn’t in control of his all of his actions that day, but it didn’t change what had happened.

Mostly, though, Anakin was just relieved that he had gotten some of the burden off of his chest and could breathe just a little bit easier. And that he wouldn’t have to think about it again for the considerable future. He could just go back to the Temple and reinsert himself back into daily Temple life, as if nothing had changed.

~~

Someone was banging on Anakin’s door and wouldn’t stop.

Groggily, he tried to fight his way to wakefulness, looking out the small transparisteel panel to see that the sun hadn’t even risen yet.

 _Why?_ was the only question that Anakin was able to formulate in his mind at that moment.

It took him a few seconds to realize that the knocking was also happening _inside_ his head too.

Of course, Obi-Wan was the only person he lived with. Who else would be trying to get him up this early? Anyone else would still be trying to get through the main door.

He gave a psychic swat to Obi-Wan in response to his continued mental presence knocking on his shields.

“Whaddya want?” Anakin slurred, trying to untangle himself from his sheets.

“We’re needed in the Council room in an hour, Anakin, so get up and get ready!” Obi-Wan called through the door.

“Kark!” He half yelled in response to both Obi-Wan and falling out of the bed. He made the decision to just stay on the floor. Surely any day that starts like this would only get worse? Why did the Council want them at the crack of dawn, anyway?

Just when he was nodding off, laid out on the floor in the mess of his sheets, the banging started again.

“Up! Now! Or you’re going to be late. I’m not waiting on you after last time!” Obi-Wan called out after he must have felt that Anakin wasn’t in danger of falling asleep again.

Anakin tried to fight down the irrational surge of anger that ignited in his gut at Obi-Wan’s words. Why couldn’t the Council call them at a reasonable time? Why did they have to call them at all? They were sent out so often that Anakin sometimes wondered if the Council just enjoyed messing with them.

Well and truly awake now, Anakin made quick work of getting to the ‘fresher to take a shower and dressing himself.

As soon as he left his room, Obi-Wan was ushering him out of the apartment, worried about being late which always seemed to be a problem for them. Anakin, as usual, couldn’t care less.

Needless to say, they were both irritated with each other by the time they walked into the cavernous Council room, with the early morning light shining through the transparisteel that encircled the room. Only Mace and Yoda were there waiting for them.

Anakin and Obi-Wan silently made their way to the center of the room before shallowly bowing to the two Jedi Masters.

“Knight Kenobi, Padawan Skywalker," the two Masters greeted them.

"Protection detail, you are assigned,” Yoda finally told them.

“Who are we going to be protecting?” asked Obi-Wan

“A Senator. There is an important vote on the Military Creation Act coming up in the Senate. There have been some hints of assassination attempts in the works for certain Senators, but nothing had happened. Until yesterday that is,” Mace answered.

Anakin was irritated that he had been dragged out of bed just to play guard duty for a Senator who more than likely didn’t need it and, even if they did, what was one less corrupt politician in the grand scheme of things?

Yoda must have been able to feel his irritation, because the small green creature gave him a _look_ while tilting his oblong head, adding, “Senator Amidala, it is. Remember her, I’m sure you both do?”

Anakin nearly choked on his spit.

His Master definitely felt his shock through the training bond, turning to raise an eyebrow at his padawan before answering Master Yoda, “Yes, I have stayed in contact with the Senator over the years since meeting her during the Naboo Crisis. Did the explosion yesterday in the Senate District have anything to do with our new assignment?”

“Yes. The Senator’s transport was bombed on arrival. If the she didn’t have such competent security that employed body doubles, Senator Amidala would most certainly be dead right now,” said Mace.

“The information you need, sent to your datapads it has been. Leave now you must, protection the Senator needs,” Yoda gave a long sigh before he continued, “Clouded, the Force is. Very important, this vote. Vote, the Senator must be able to.”

“Yes Master Yoda,” Obi-Wan replied, giving a mental nudge to Anakin who’s brain still hadn’t really caught up to what was going on, before bowing to the two Masters.

Mace and Yoda returned the bow, saying “May the Force be with you.”

“And also with you,” Anakin heard his voice replying automatically along with his Master’s.

~~

It wasn’t until they were in the lift taking them to Padme’s apartment that Anakin’s mind finally processed what happened.

He honestly wished it didn’t. He was suddenly incredibly anxious about seeing the former Queen of Naboo and distinctly aware of how badly his nine-year-old self’s attempts at what he now recognized as flirting really were.

As soon as he realized just who they were protecting, his mind started racing. He was already wired just from being around people again after his self-imposed isolation to his room. Now, around his Master and meeting part of the Council, inside a full Senate building where the woman they would be protecting, the woman who he had had a not-so-secret crush on for the ten years since he had known her, he felt like crawling out of his skin just to get away from the feeling. His ears felt like there were going to be permanently flushed and he had broken out into a sweat. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this nervous. 

His Master picked up on his anxiousness, of course. 

“I haven’t felt you this tense since we fell into that nest of gundarks,” Obi-Wan remarked.

Anakin snorted derisively, answering, “You fell into that nightmare, Master, and I rescued you. Remember?”

“Oh… yes,” was the only answer he got.

Anakin felt a wave of fondness for his Master when he realized that that was Obi-Wan’s clumsy attempt to take his mind off of his roiling emotions. He was surprised to find that, at that moment, he was able to let go of his resentment of Obi-Wan, for just a little bit.

The first thing Anakin saw when the doors to the lift opened was a very excited Gungan.

“Obi? Obi!” Jar Jar exclaimed, seemingly surprised to see his Master.

His Master smiled at the hyperactive Gungan as he said, “Hello Jar Jar, it’s good to see you.”

“Oops! Wheresa mesa manners?” Jar Jar finally looked past Obi-Wan and realized Anakin was there too.

“This must be your apprentice,” Jar Jar tried to articulate his words to resemble standard Basic syntax before abandoning it when he realized just who Obi-Wan’s apprentice was.

“Nooo! Ani? Little Ani? No! Yousa so big! Mesa no believen!”

“Hi Jar Jar,” Anakin greeted before being dragged into a surprisingly strong hug.

He could feel Obi-Wan’s amusement through the bond and tried not to get too irritated at his Master.

“Come, come, mesa take you to the Senator,” Jar Jar motioned them to follow him.

Anakin looked at Obi-Wan shortly before shrugging and following the Gungan further into the spacious apartment.

When they eventually found Padme, Anakin found all of that all of the racing thoughts that had been plaguing him the entire morning suddenly fell away.

 _She is somehow even more beautiful than I remembered_ , he thought.

Anakin was lost in thought until Padme seemed to recognize him.

“Ani?” she asked, “My goodness, you’ve grown!”

Anakin met her eyes for a long moment, feeling caught out and speechless, he said the first thing that popped into his mind.

“So have you… grown more beautiful, I mean… and much shorter… for a Senator, I mean.”

Anakin felt his ears grow impossibly redder. He wanted nothing more than for the building to collapse and put him out of his misery. He barely managed to control himself enough to stop the blush from spreading to his face as he felt Obi-Wan’s amused disapproval through the bond.

“Oh Ani, you’ll always be that little boy I knew on Tatooine,” Padme told him.

 _Force_ , Anakin thought _, I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life_.

He barely heard Obi-Wan assuring Padme that their presence wouldn’t impact her daily routine and Captain Typho’s appraisal of the situation. He was attempting to regain some kind of control of himself in front of all these people.

“I don’t need more security, I need answers. I want to know who is trying to kill me!” was Padme’s heated interjection.

He felt more than heard Obi-Wan’s disagreement as he said, “We’re here to protect you, not to start an investigation.”

 _Bantha shit_ , Anakin thought as he spoke without thinking, “We will find out who is trying to kill you Padme, I promise.”

Anakin almost jumped from the sharp sting of disapproval that was practically shunted toward him through the bond.

Obi-Wan’s voice was cool as he turned to Anakin and told him, “We are not going to exceed our mandate, my young padawan.”

Unbidden, Anakin felt himself be consumed by annoyance towards his Master. He tried to control his voice as he replied, “I meant in the interest of protecting her, Master, of course.”

His Master turned his entire body toward him, looking him in the eyes as he spoke to him like his was scolding a youngling, “We are not going through this again, Anakin. You will pay attention to my lead.”

Fury and embarrassment warred in Anakin’s mind as he listened to his Master essentially give him a dressing down, in public, in front of Padme. He suddenly couldn’t care less about containing his annoyance, in his feelings or in his words, as he flippantly asked, “Why?”

Why did he have to constantly follow Obi-Wan’s lead? Especially when he was making a poor decision like not trying to figure out why they were even needed here in the first place. He was almost twenty years old. He was tired of constantly being beholden to someone. _Gardulla, Watto, the Council, Obi-Wan_ …

He knew that the circumstances of his life now couldn’t be more different from his life on Tatooine, but the feeling of impotency burned at Anakin more than ever right at that moment.

“What?” was Obi-Wan’s shocked response.

 _Kark_ , Anakin thought, backtracking before he completely lost control of the situation, “Why else do you think we were assigned to protect her? Protection is a job for local security, not Jedi, it’s overkill Master. Investigation is implied in our mandate.”

“We will do as the Council has instructed,” Obi-Wan said slowly, “and you will learn your place, young one.”

Anakin could feel his nails cut into his palms as he barely restrained himself from giving his Master an answer he was sure the older man wouldn’t appreciate.

“Perhaps with your presence, the threat will be revealed,” Padme tried to diffuse the tension, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will retire.”

Captain Typho motioned for them to follow him, saying, “I feel a lot better having you two here. I’ll have an officer on every floor and I’ll be at the command center down here,” he pointed toward a door at the end of the hallway before leaving them with Jar Jar.

~~

Anakin was looking through the broken panel that he just saw his Master jump out of. 

The broken transparisteel panel on the 173rd level of the building. That Master just crashed through.

 _Force_ , why couldn’t his Master leave the impulsiveness to him? Anakin always found it funny that others thought recklessness was a trait that was exclusive to him and not a kriffing lineage trait.

He turned around to look at Padme, trying not to focus on her night clothes, calling out, “Stay here!”

He passed a group of guards rushing toward the bedroom as he quickly made his way out of the apartment and to the lift, using the Force to make the it come straight to his level.

By the time he was on the ground level of the building, Anakin was beginning to get jumpy, he could feel Obi-Wan’s own anxiousness through the bond along with a feeling of _hurry-faster-now_ and he knew that he had to get to his Master quickly.

He immediately spotted a cluster of speeders and didn’t even stop to consider doing anything but hot-wiring the first one with an open-cockpit and immediately taking off into the Coruscant night. He pulled on the bond, willing the Force to guide him to his Master.

He sighed when he finally found his Master, still hanging on to the droid a few levels below him even as someone seemed to be trying to shoot his Master down. Anakin immediately moved the speeder towards Obi-Wan, just barely drawing parallel to the man trying to keep his haphazard hold on the droid when, suddenly, the droid exploded, sending the man falling through levels of intersecting speeder traffic below him.

Clenching his jaw, Anakin yanked the speeder into a dive in an attempt to stop his Master from becoming a good looking duracrete decoration.

As he finally got close enough to Obi-Wan for the man to realize he was there, Anakin leveled the speeder out so Obi-Wan could grab onto the end of it in order to pull himself into the passenger seat.

“Master! The next time you call me reckless, you better remember this!” Anakin called out to his Master who was attempting to catch his breath next to him.

“What took you so long?” Obi-Wan gasped out.

“Oh, you know, Master. It took me a while to find a speeder I really liked, open cockpit, the right speed capabilities, the perfect color…” he answered flippantly, trying to keep the fear that had held on to him from the time he saw his Master jump out of a high rise apartment out of his voice.

Obi-Wan huffed before replying, “If you’d spend as much time working on your saber skills as you do with your wit, you would rival Master Yoda as a swordsman.”

He turned his gaze from weaving in and out of traffic in order to give his Master a sly smirk, answering, “I thought I already did!”

“Only in your mind… Anakin!” Obi-Wan yelled as Anakin put their speeder into a sharp vertical dive in order to escape the blaster fire that was now hitting things around them, the younger man laughing manically the whole time.

Anakin suddenly pulled their speeder out of the dive and wove in and out of buildings and through multiple levels and lanes of traffic in order to lose their pursuer while still keeping an eye on them, breaking just about every traffic law ever created on the planet.

He saw Obi-Wan holding on to the side of the speeder with a white knuckled grip, causing him to glibly say, “Sorry Master, I forgot you don’t really like flying.”

“I don’t mind flying, but what you’re doing is suicide!” his Master yelled over the sound of multiple speeders beeping at them as Anakin pulled through four lanes of traffic, miraculously without causing any major crashes.

“Yes!” Anakin shouted as he finally swung them around to where they were the ones chasing the shooter, making it much harder for the bounty hunter to fire on them.

“This guy’s gonna kill himself any minute, Master, just hold on a second,” Anakin tried to reassure his Master.

“We want him alive, padawan!” Obi-Wan reminded him.

“Yes, Master,” was Anakin’s distracted reply as he focused on chasing the increasingly erratic speeder in front of them that was heading toward a power plant.

Obi-Wan started trying to back up in his seat, pushing his body back into the leather of the speeder as if he could get away from what he knew was about to happen.

“Slow down! Don’t go near those power couplings, it’s dangerous!” Obi-Wan warned him.

His Master’s warning fell on deaf ears as Anakin immediately drove them right in the middle of a pair of couplings, triggering bolts of electricity to arc through both of them and the speeder. They convulsed uncontrollably while the speeder lurched under them.

“Wha..what are youuuu… doing!?” Obi-Wan somehow screamed out through being electrocuted.

“Sorry, Master!” Anakin yelled as they finally cleared the electricity, covertly trying to make sure that Obi-Wan was okay out of the corner of his eye.

Anakin was trailing the bounty hunter as they made their way out of the power plant, losing him completely as he made a sharp turn and disappeared into a major lane of traffic.

He brought the speeder to a stop in the middle of the intersection as he tried to find the bounty hunter’s distinctive speeder all the while trying to ignore Obi-Wan’s disparaging remarks.

“You’ve lost him!” Obi-Wan yelled, uncharacteristically furious.

“I’m deeply sorry, Master,” Anakin replied only half sarcastically.

He tuned out Obi-Wan’s tirade, trying to ignore the hurt the words caused him as he finally spotted the speeder he was searching for. The bounty hunter was about ten levels below Anakin’s speeder and was heading east at a pretty fast clip. Anakin reached for the Force and quickly calculated how long it would take him to fall that far before making up his mind.

“Excuse me for a moment,” he politely interrupted Obi-Wan’s rant and promptly jumped over the side of the speeder.

“Anakin!” he heard Obi-Wan yell after him.

Anakin just laughed, feeling a frenzied sort of joy as he free fell through multiple levels of Coruscant’s busiest traffic sector. He was disappointed when he slammed into the speeder, but the look of surprise on the half-hidden face of the bounty hunter was well worth it.

He climbed up the body of the speeder before it suddenly shuddered and slowed down too fast for Anakin to keep his grip, causing him to slide all the way to the front of the speeder. He realized the precariousness of his position a millisecond before the first blaster bolt hit the metal where his hand had just been resting.

The bounty hunter, who was looking more and more likely to actually be female changeling, continued to shoot at him until she clipped her speeder in such a way that caused Anakin to have to scramble for a grip on the opposite side of the front end of it. After he secured his grip, he used his left hand to unclip his saber from his utility belt, hacking at the joints of the cockpit in an attempt to capture the bounty hunter only for her to fire at him, nearly at point blank range, with her blaster.

Anakin watched in despair as his lightsaber went sailing into the black night behind the speeder, already knowing his Master would have something to say about losing his ‘saber, yet again.

However, he was able to open a space big enough in the barrier of the cockpit for him to stick his arm in in and, with a little aid from the Force, attempted to rip the blaster out of the changeling’s hands, clenching his thighs around the speeder as she tried to dislodge him. Suddenly, the blaster went off in their struggle, causing the bounty hunter to lose control of the speeder.

“Kark!” Anakin yelped, hanging on as the speeder careened out of control and started approaching the ground at dangerous speeds. Right before they made impact, the bounty hunter was able to pull the nose of the speeder up in a last-minute attempt to slow down the speed of their collision.

Anakin lost his hold on the sleek edges of the speeder as the force of the deceleration caused him to go flying through the air and hit the ground, hard. All he could do for a long moment was lay there, the breath knocked out of him and his back already feeling like one giant bruise as he watched people edge closer to him. _Probably to see if he was alive_ , he thought morbidly.

The Force nudged him to get up and he realized why as he felt the changeling exit her speeder and dash into the club they had crashed by. Just as he had gotten himself standing up and moving, he felt his Master close in on them.

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan called out, weaving in and out of the inebriated sentients that were littering the walkways.

When his Master finally caught up to him, he was surprised to see the man holding his lightsaber, pressing it into his hand as he said, “Next time try not to lose it.”

“I’m sorry Master,” Anakin told him truthfully.

But Obi-Wan wouldn’t let go when Anakin tried to pull his lightsaber back to him.

“A lightsaber is a Jedi’s most important possession,” Obi-Wan lectured.

“Yes, Master,” Anakin grit his teeth as he felt the frustrated amusement leaking through the bond.

“He must keep it with him at all times. This weapon is your life!” Obi-Wan continued.

“I’ve heard this all before, I know, Master.”

Finally, Obi-Wan let Anakin take his lightsaber before murmuring, “But you haven’t learned anything, Anakin.”

He had to close his eyes. They had filled with tears almost immediately after hearing Obi-Wan’s quiet, cutting statement.

“I try, Master,” Anakin choked out, voice shaking.

Obi-Wan gave looked at him from the corner of his, caught off guard by the swell of emotions bleeding through the bond, no doubt, but also used to his apprentice’s swinging moods. Instead of commenting on it, he motioned for Anakin to follow him into the club.

“Why do I think you’re going to be the death of me?” Obi-Wan tried to joke.

Anakin found himself getting angry at his Master’s attitude, sniping back, “Don’t say that, Master!” He continued in a quieter, more serious voice, “You’re the closest person to me… I love you. I don’t want to cause you pain.”

It took half a second for Anakin to realize what he had said, but he couldn’t regret it, not when he could feel the shocked pleasure that leaked through his Master’s shields.

He was surprised when his Master’s next words weren’t a commentary on the dangers of attachment, instead asking, “Then why don’t you listen to me?” in a voice that matched the seriousness of Anakin’s just seconds ago.

“I try, Master. I will. I’ll do better. I promise,” he babbled.

Obi-Wan took a deep breath before letting it out in a long sigh. It seemed his Master wanted to drop that line of conversation as he, instead, asked, “Do you see him?”

It took a second for Anakin’s mind to catch up, replying “I think he is a she. And a changeling.”

“Then we must be careful. Let’s check this place out,” he said, walking away.

“Where are you going?”

“To get a drink,” said Obi-Wan, throwing a smirk over his shoulder as he made his way to the bar.

Anakin watched his Master get lost in the crowd of sweaty, heaving bodies before turning around and making his way around the club, keeping his senses open and maintaining a light connection to the Force as he searched for the changeling.

After futile minutes of searching only to come up with no leads, Anakin felt a disturbance near the bar where Obi-Wan was. He was already shoving people out of the way before he had processed just what was going on and pulled out his ‘saber, lighting it as stood next to Obi-Wan in response to the group of sentients now crowding his Master.

“Easy… Jedi business. Go back to your drinks,” he said.

Anakin and his Master picked up the bounty hunter who was still busy gripping the stub of her arm in shock and took her outside, setting her down in the alley on the side of the club’s entrance.

“Do you know who you just tried to kill?” Obi-Wan asked mildly, poking at the stub of her arm trying to assess the damage.

Anakin looked down at the changeling in disgust, remembering that the woman had just tried to assassinate Padme. The changeling just glared right back as she answered, “The Senator from Naboo.”

“Who hired you?” Obi-Wan asked.

She turned her glare from Anakin to Obi-Wan answering, “It was just a job.”

“Tell us!” Anakin asked urgently.

“She’s gonna die soon, whoever tries after me won’t make the same mistake I did,” was all the bounty hunter said.

Anakin crouched down and got into the bounty hunter’s face to ask, “Who hired you? Tell us.”

When she just glared, Anakin finally lost his temper, yelling, “Tell us now!”

He saw the resignation in her eyes and felt it in the Force, “It was a bounty hunter called…”

He didn’t feel the warning in the Force until it was too late. By the time he realized what was happening, the dart was already lodged into the changeling’s neck, killing her almost instantly.

“Kark!” Anakin yelled, kicking a piece of trash down the alley.

“Control yourself, padawan,” Obi-Wan said absently as he picked the dart from the dead woman’s neck.

“Toxic dart,” he mused, pocketing it, “Come along, Anakin, we’ve left the Senator without protection for too long.”

~~

Anakin watched incredulously as Padme entrusted her Senatorial powers to Jar Jar.

Padme was brilliant, of that Anakin had no doubt. But sometimes he wondered just how low the standards were for Republic Senators, especially if _Jar Jar_ met them.

As Jar Jar walked away to do Force knows what, Padme turned to him before protesting, “I don’t like this idea of hiding!”

He watched as she paced up and down the length of the room, saying, “Don’t worry, Padme. The Council finally agreed to investigate who’s trying to kill you. It won’t take my Master long to find the culprit.”

Anakin’s words didn’t seem to reassure her. If anything, she seemed more irritated when she said, “I haven’t worked for a year to defeat the Military Creation Act only to not be there when its fate is decided!”

He could understand why she was upset, but she had to realize that if she were dead, there would be no more votes for her, period. No Senator from Naboo who actually fought for what she believed in, actually tried to help her people.

“Sometimes we have to let go of our pride and do what is required of us,” he told her.

She stopped her pacing to look at him disbelievingly, “Pride?!” she cried, “I suggest you reserve your opinions for topics that you have an actual understanding of.”

He bit his tongue and tried to ignore the way his ears heated up at her rebuke, apologizing, “Sorry, Senator.”

Padme seemed to deflate when she heard his apology, sitting down as she said, “Ani, no!”

“ _Please_ don’t call me that,” he couldn’t help but say.

“Call you what? Ani?” she asked.

At his nod, she continued, wondering out loud, “I’ve always called you that… is it not your name?”

He tried to ignore the fact that the only other person who had called him Ani was his mother and it just didn’t feel right coming out of Padme’s mouth. Especially now.

“My name is Anakin,” he said, “Ani is a childhood nickname that I haven’t gone by in years.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking him up and down, “It’s impossible to deny you’ve… grown up.”

Anakin felt his face split into a wide grin when he noticed her attention.

“Master Obi-Wan doesn’t see it though,” he mused.

“Mentors have a way of focusing on our faults in order to teach us to overcome them. It’s the only way we grow.”

“I know. But it’s so infuriating!” he threw up his hands as he started to rant, “Don’t get me wrong, Obi-Wan is the best Master in the Temple. I’m lucky to learn from him. He’s as wise as Master Yoda and as powerful as Master Windu. He didn’t have to train me after Master Jinn died, but he did, and I’ll always be grateful for that,” he said.

Sighing, he continued, “It’s just, in some ways… a lot of ways… I’m ahead of him. I know that I’m ready for the Trials and so does he. Every time the subject gets brought up, Master Obi-Wan just repeats that I’m too unpredictable. I know that I can be reckless, but half of the time, that’s from trying to save him! I’m supposed to be collected, in control of myself and my emotions, but it’s hard when I see padawans younger than me getting knighted and my own Master refuses to let me move on.”

“That must be frustrating,” Padme told him.

“It’s worse!” he cried, “He’s overly critical! He never listens to me,” he said more seriously, thinking about the events of the last week.

“Maybe your Master just doesn’t want you to grow up so fast,” she said, looking him in the eyes, “Don’t try to grow up too fast, Anakin.”

He stared at her, admiring the way her long eyelashes fell upon the swell of her cheeks before reminding her, “I am grown up. You said so yourself.”

Padme turned away from his gaze, pleading, “Please, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” he asked, not willing to admit he got caught out staring at her.

“You know, Anakin. I can practically hear your thoughts. It makes me uncomfortable.”

He tucked his chin to his chest, averting his gaze to the floor as he apologized, “I’m sorry that I’ve upset you, Senator.”

Anakin looked back up after a moment of silence and watched Padme glance at him, snorting quietly before turning around to resume her packing. He leaned against the wall and watched the traffic go by, highlighted by the midday sun, as he wondered just why he was the one assigned to protection duty. Alone. He knew the Council and he knew his Master, there was no way this was their idea. If Obi-Wan had his way, he’d be attached to Anakin’s hip in order to make sure Anakin doesn’t insult his way into an interplanetary war by accident.

Whatever it was that got him assigned as the sole guard for Padme’s protection, he was grateful. It got him away from Obi-Wan for a while and being in the company of the gorgeous Senator wasn’t exactly a hardship.

~~

Anakin was watching his Master out of the corner of his eye as Padme said her goodbyes to Captain Typho and her handmaidens.

He was nervous.

This was the first actual, solo mission he had ever been given. He had long thought he was ready for them and had often bemoaned the fact that he hadn’t gotten one before. But now that he was about to leave for Naboo, he found himself unsure. It was going to be odd not having Obi-Wan there, watching his back, a reliable presence that he was realizing all too late gave Anakin a great feeling of security when he was nearby.

He remembered the way that Obi-Wan had been so quick to dismiss or disparage him lately and crushed his feelings of inadequacy.

He tried not to remember the way that Obi-Wan had sat at his door, apologizing. Or how he held him as he cried on his shoulder that night. He wasn’t successful.

Padme’s voice addressing him broke him out of his sulking, “Then my Jedi protector will have to prove how grown up he is.”

Anakin frowned as he tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out just what had been going on while he was stuck inside his head thinking about his Master.

Said Master took the opportunity granted by Anakin’s confusion to pull him aside, telling him, “Anakin, make sure you stay on Naboo. Don’t attract any attention. Do nothing without the approval of the Council or before checking in with me.”

A bolt of irritation hit Anakin and he only managed to keep his sarcastic comments to himself due to the sincere worry and concern he could barely feel leaking through the iron-clad shields that Obi-Wan had up, instead replying in what he hoped was an even voice, “Yes, Master.”

Obi-Wan sent a feeling of acceptance tinged with anxiety he wasn’t able to totally keep out of the psychic connection between them as he turned to address Padme, “I will find the person responsible for the bounty on you quickly, Senator. You will be back here in no time.”

“Thank you, Master Jedi,” Padme replied gratefully.

Anakin saw their public transport had arrived and started loading passengers while they were talking, “Time to go!” he said.

As Anakin picked up their luggage Obi-Wan called out, “May the Force be with you.”

He gave Obi-Wan a small smile as he replied, “May the Force be with you, Master.”

He tried to ignore the anxiety that had made its home in the pit of his stomach. He had a bad feeling that whatever his Master was going to get up to, it would be dangerous. He sent a sense of caution through the bond, trying to let his Master know, quietly, about his intuition. All he got was a sense of peace and acceptance that set Anakin’s teeth on edge.

“Suddenly, I’m afraid,” Padme said, bringing Anakin out of his thoughts.

He found her honesty refreshing, particularly since he felt the same way, just for different reasons, “I’m kind of scared, too. This is my first assignment on my own.”

Padme smiled at him, her relief radiating in the Force, voice impish as she replied, “There’s nothing to worry about, we have Artoo with us!”

As the astromech in question sent out a series of beeps that translated into cocky reassurance, they both laughed.

~~

Anakin awoke, violently, panting into the stale air of the public transport.

Padme was sitting in front of him, her arm outreached, in what looked like an aborted move to try to shake him awake from what he now knew was a nightmare.

“What?” Anakin said, still a little breathless from his dream. He had to swallow around the bile that rose in his throat from the phantom memory of burnt flesh in the desert heat.

“You seemed to be having a nightmare,” was all Padme said.

Anakin’s mind vividly replayed the nightmare, causing his throat to close up. When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to reply, Padme told him that the transport was now in lightspeed.

Feeling incredibly awkward and off center from his nightmare and the tense silence that had descended between them, Anakin blurted out the first thing that came to his mind, “I look forward to seeing Naboo again. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

Padme quirked an eyebrow even as she smiled, saying, “You were just a little boy then. Time changes how we see things. It may not be how you remember it.”

“Even if it did, I have no doubt Naboo will still be the most beautiful planet I’ve ever been to,” Anakin said confidently.

“It must be difficult having sworn your life to the Jedi,” Padme mused, “Not being able to visit the places you like, or do the things you like...”

“Or be with the people that I love,” Anakin couldn’t help but interrupt, his mother’s memory fresh in his mind thanks to the nightmare.

“Are you allowed to love?” Padme asked, surprised, “I thought that was forbidden in your Order?”

“Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion, which from my point of view is unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life. Some might say we are encouraged to love,” he said.

He thought about his mother and the unconditional love that she had always had for him, even when his uncontrolled Force outbursts nearly got them killed. He thought about Obi-Wan and the way he hadn’t even baulked at training him, even though he had just lost his own Master and was barely 18 at the time. He thought about the Code that only allowed people to love by halves. For how could you love unconditionally without forming some kind of attachment? How could you love without wanting to be around a person, without wanting the best for that person? Without wanting that person to avoid dying prematurely if you could do something about it?

It was the cruelest hypocrisy that Anakin had learned about the Order. A group of powerful Force wielders whose emotions could influence the galaxy at large and they withheld themselves from feeling the full force of the greatest, most powerful emotion there was. How much different would the galaxy be if Jedi allowed themselves to love, truly love, and act on it? How many atrocities could have been avoided if the Jedi allowed themselves to get involved, let their emotions be felt instead of releasing them into the Force with the barest acknowledgement?

Anakin had to forcibly make himself abandon that train of thought. He had spent more time than he liked contemplating the inconsistencies in the Jedi’s dogmatic approach to a set of rules that were meant to be guidelines more than anything.

“You have changed so much,” Padme told him.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he grinned as he told Padme, “You’re exactly how I remembered you. I’m sure Naboo hasn’t changed much either.”

“It hasn’t,” Padme told him, turning her head as she blushed slightly.

~~

Anakin felt overcome with emotion as he looked upon Naboo’s picturesque landscape with rolling green hills and steep crystal blue waterfalls.

“If I grew up here, I don’t think I’d ever leave!” he told Padme.

“I doubt that,” she said, smiling at him.

As they got into a conversation about just how she became Queen of Naboo, Anakin thought about the parallels between their situations. They were both young when they got involved in their respective professions. Did other eight-or-nine-year olds out in the galaxy know what they wanted to do that early? Sometimes, he felt the same as Padme, that they were too young to dedicate their life to something that, most of the time, they didn’t feel they understood fully until they were older. By then, it’s almost impossible to say if they would’ve made the same decisions as their younger selves did.

Anakin oftentimes resented the Jedi as a whole, but he had a hard time actually envisioning leaving the Order and making his way through the galaxy on his own merits without the support of the Order, without Obi-Wan. It sounded as if Padme felt the same. She had entered politics at such a young age that, even though she now had ambitions that didn’t align with being a public servant, she chose to continue doing what she had always done instead of starting a family or just retiring from public life.

It seemed like they were both beholden to their pasts and the obligations they felt to help people in any way they could.

They eventually made their way to the throne room of the palace and bowed before the current monarch of Naboo, Queen Jamillia.

The Queen quickly stood and approached Padme, taking her hands in her own as she said, “We’ve been worried about you. I’m so very glad you’re here and safe, Padme.”

“Thank you, your Highness,” Padme said warmly, “I only wish I could have served you more faithfully by voting on the most important bill to come to the Senate floor in generations.”

“Your safety was more important than the vote, Senator, her Highness saw the truth in that, and we are all glad you are here, back home and safe,” one of the Queen’s advisors said.

Anakin paid close attention to the conversation between the Queen and Padme. He wasn’t really caught up on Galactic politics at the moment and hearing about an ex-Jedi that was now in control of over 200 systems was attention grabbing.

“There are rumors, Your Highness, that the Federation Army was not reduced as they were ordered,” Padme told the Queen.

Anakin interjected himself into the conversation, adding derisively, “The Jedi have not been allowed to investigate. It would be too dangerous for the economy, we were told.”

“I don’t agree with the stance the Republic has taken regarding the Trade Federation, particularly barring the Jedi from investigating, but we must keep our faith in the institution. The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it,” Queen Jamillia said.

“However, we must consider your safety,” the Queen said to Padme.

“I was thinking I would stay in the Lake Country. There are some isolated areas up there,” the Senator said.

“That sounds perfect! It’s settled then,” the Queen said.

~~

Anakin thought Padme’s family was amazing.

He hadn’t been around an actual, happy family before. It was just his mother and him back on Tatooine and all the other slaves and their families all lived in a constant state of paranoia like them. Then, with the Jedi, family was a foreign concept. For all that Obi-Wan was his constant companion, using the word family to describe his Master just felt… wrong. Hollow and untrue. Obi-Wan was both more and less than what Anakin envisioned as family.

It was strange to see how united this group of people were in their concern for Padme. How free they were with their emotions, easily expressing their worries and fears for her. It had actually thrown him a bit off balance, surprisingly. He was used to being the most emotional person in the room, especially at the Temple, so to see a family, to feel the Naberries be so demonstrative with their feelings, constantly touching and reassuring while Anakin was the stoic, quiet one, was odd for him.

Now, as he sat here and watched Padme look into the distance over the water at her Lake Country estate they just arrived at, Anakin was so very aware of all that he had given up in the name of being a Jedi.

“See that island?” Padme asked, “We used to swim there every day. I love the water.”

Anakin stood and stepped up to stand beside her, looking down at her to reply, “I do too. I guess it comes from growing up on a desert planet.”

Anakin was suddenly gripped with the urge to take this chance, to live, to feel, as much as he could while he could. He needed to feel something other than the sense of helplessness that had plagued him since he first woke up from seeing his mother in his nightmares. Needed something to distract him from his widely swinging emotions. Needed touch to ground him.

He needed something that only Padme could give him right now.

She seemed to realize what he wasn’t saying, because all Padme did was look at him intensely for a long moment, like she could read all the thoughts that were flying through his head and wasn’t opposed to them.

Eventually, she ended the connection between them, saying, “We used to lie on the sand and let the sun dry us while we tried to guess the names of the songbirds.”

“I hate sand,” he said, voice low, coming to stand in front of Padme, “It’s coarse and irritating. It gets everywhere.”

His heart sped up as he brought the back of his hand up to Padme’s arm, caressing the smooth skin and watching avidly as goosebumps broke out on her soft skin, “Not like here,” he said looking her in the eyes, “Here everything is soft… and smooth,” he whispered, running his hand up and down her arm now.

When all Padme did was tilt her face up to look at him, eyes bright, Anakin took her chin in his free hand and kissed her.

After an endless moment of soft lips pressed against his, Padme pulled away, saying, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m sorry,” Anakin apologized, not meaning a word of it.

Padme looked at him like she could see right through him and his lies

~~

Anakin wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here.

He was hastily pulling off his leggings while Padme watched him with sharp eyes as she practically prowled towards him.

It had all started at dinner. After he had made his decision out by the lake, shared that short kiss, Anakin had been, admittedly, relentless in his stumbling attempts at seduction. To be fair, he had never had to seduce anyone before. His very few encounters had been borne out of a need for mutual release. Cold, transactional, even. And oftentimes embarrassing, considering the number of times his Master had caught him with his pants around his ankles.

This was different, he could feel it in the way the Force roiled around them and in him.

He wanted this so badly, his hands were shaking. He knew it wasn’t just about sex or about finally sleeping with Padme. It felt like this was his last attempt to keep himself afloat in a sea of roiling thoughts and emotions that he had tried so very hard to ignore over the last week but had ended up almost devouring him instead. He was tired of feeling like he was about to explode from anger when he wasn’t too busy feeling like he was walking through a dream, everything so ephemeral that nothing mattered.

He had to do _something_. This seemed like the best _something_ he could ever imagine.

It had all started out by innocently cutting some pears for the Senator and it had escalated so quickly that Anakin’s head was still spinning.

There were confessions of feelings that Anakin wasn’t sure reflected how he felt, but he was just feeling so _much_ , _constantly_ , that half of the time he didn’t know what was coming out of his mouth. Promises he probably couldn’t keep and declarations that were only partially true hung heavy in the air between them for the rest of the night.

Until Padme had finally seemed to overcome whatever mental hurdle that had her pulling away earlier to drag him into a searing kiss that he could still feel on his lips.

After that, everything was a blur. A hot mouth with smooth lips and warm skin pressed against him were all he could remember as they fumbled their way toward Padme’s bedroom, her pulling his tunics off of him to leave a trail behind them.

“Lay down on the bed,” Padme ordered when they finally crossed the threshold into a large, spacious room.

His body was moving before he even realized what she had said.

He felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin, every nerve in his body was alive and she hadn’t even touched him other than to kiss him yet.

Anakin watched, intrigued, as she seemed to search for something in the closet. When he saw that they were long strips of fabric, scarves maybe, he quirked his eyebrow at her wondering where she was going with this.

“I’m going to tie your hands to the posts,” she told him.

A noise that Anakin would deny was a whine escaped him and he just nodded to her helplessly. He could only watch, enraptured, as she deftly tied his hands to the post. He gave a sharp tug when she was done and something in him relaxed when he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to get out of these without some serious effort.

When he turned his attention back to the gorgeous woman who had him at her mercy, she was busy looking at his splayed-out body hungrily.

“Like what you see?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“Very much so. You really have grown,” Padme replied, voice low.

“Padme,” he couldn’t help but complain, “please, touch me, do something,” he writhed on the bed, feeling incredibly exposed but even more turned on for it.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked as she walked towards him.

Anakin’s mind nearly whited out when he considered the possibilities that were open to him. He finally composed himself enough to reply, “I want to taste you.”

Padme seemed to like that idea as she visibly shuddered before climbing on top of him and kissing him soundly, her tongue pushing past his lips to lick into his mouth. Anakin could only moan and twine his tongue around hers, wanting so badly to touch her but unable to with his hands restrained. He thrusted his hips up, helplessly, in an attempt to get any kind of friction.

“Has anyone ever sat on your face before?” she asked, finally pulling herself away from him just to shower his neck with wet, sucking kisses that would undoubtedly leave a mark.

“No,” he choked out, “but I have an idea of how its done,” he said, voice breaking as Padme bit into the muscle where his neck met his shoulder.

She finally looked at him properly and said, “I’m going to sit on your face then. I want your tongue on me, in me, right now,” her pupils were blown as she added, “Just kick the mattress if it gets to be too much for you.”

 _Too much_? Anakin thought distractedly, _how could this ever be too much?_

Every thought in his head disappeared when Padme finally moved her body to balance over his head. Her skirts fell around him, separating him from everything else in the room but Padme and the incredible heat that he felt getting closer to him. When he felt the hot, wet folds come in contact with his mouth, he moaned, loudly, at the taste of Padme.

 _Oh Force, oh Force_ , _oh Force_ , his brain chanted. He was completely unprepared for how all-encompassing the sensation of Padme riding his face would be.

After processing the shock of the new experience, Anakin enthusiastically began to use his tongue on her, to great effect if the sounds that Padme was making were any indication.

After laving her clit with his flattened tongue, Anakin stiffened it before diving into the tight hole that was already fluttering, fucking her with his tongue before alternating between the two tasks. All the while, Padme ground down on his face, rocking back in forth, drenching him with her wetness.

Anakin couldn’t get enough of it.

He wanted to draw this out as long as possible. He had never done anything like this, been so completely at someone else’s mercy and essentially used while he couldn’t even do something as simple as touch. So, every time he felt Padme tense or felt the way her internal muscles started tightening, he started doing something else with his tongue, leaving Padme frustrated if the way she gripped his hair was anything to go off of.

Eventually, Anakin couldn’t ignore his own need, his dick was aching, and he knew if he could actually see it right now, it would be leaking precome. So, he put all of his focus on making Padme come as he flattened his tongue yet again to broadly swipe up, down and around her clit until she was shaking and coming apart on top of him. He couldn’t help but moan, again, as he felt the slickness of her arousal dripping down his face, his chin, all the way to his chest.

Padme didn’t move for a long moment, gripping the headboard as she tried to regain her breath and slow her heartrate down.

“That was…” she started, “that was… wow.”

Anakin could only give a muffled moan, face still buried in Padme as he started uselessly thrusting up, again, desperately trying to alleviate the all-consuming need for friction on his cock.

Padme laughed as she scooted backwards sitting low on his stomach before bringing her face closer to his, examining it as she said, “I can’t believe I just rode a Jedi’s face, you’re a mess!”

They both laughed a little breathlessly before Padme swooped down and kissed him deeply, tongue invading his mouth as she seemed to chase the taste of herself within Anakin’s mouth and on his lips.

By this point, Anakin couldn’t take it anymore. He needed some kind of stimulation. His dick had never been this hard in his entire life.

“Please, please, please,” he babbled, “please Padme, please, please, please.”

“Hush,” she said, hand gently moving his sweat-soaked hair off of his forehead, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

As she reassured him, Padme had moved down Anakin’s body, lifting herself up and positioning herself over his leaking shaft.

He looked down the extended plane of his body, his hands still pulled taught by the ropes that Padme had wound around his wrists and tied to the posts of the bed, and almost came right then. Padme was hovering just over his jutting cock, watching him, still fully dressed, her thin skirts hiked up so she could ride him.

 _Kark_ , he thought, his body writhing and wrists pulling at his restraints, _she was the hottest thing he’d ever seen_.

She slowly lowered herself onto him, the way his cock disappeared into the wet heat of her just barely visible under the skirts she had bunched up in her hands.

 _No_ , he revised _, that was the hottest thing he’d ever seen_.

It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d ever been with someone. It _was_ the first time he was having one of his reoccurring fantasies fulfilled though. Padme had been the star of many of his dreams since he figured out what, exactly, his dick was for.

None of them compared to the actual thing though.

He had thought Padme would be soft and yielding, that he’d be the one holding himself over her with shaking arms as he drove into her over and over again while her thighs clenched around his waist as he peppered her face with kisses.

Reality was so much better.

He had no idea how she was able to figure out just what he needed. _Anakin_ hadn’t even known that he’d needed this, needed to be restrained, be taken, have someone else make all the decisions. Padme had though and, _Force_ , she approached sex with the same single-minded intensity that she seemed to approach everything else in her life.

A particularly hard bounce on his cock got Anakin’s mind away from his introspection and back into the present.

He pulled harder at the restraints around his wrists, wanting nothing more than to touch, feel, caress, and grab the heated flesh on top of him. The impossibility of it made his dick twitch.

Padme stared at him as she leaned forward on his body, her hands just barely brushing his chest and ghosting over his nipples causing Anakin to arch into the not-quite-enough contact.

“You like this?” she asked breathlessly, yanking on the chain around his left hand.

“Yes,” he rasped, nearly incoherent with the feeling of the heat of her cunt around him, how her hair tickled his chest, the way her breath was ghosting over his cheek and the shell of his ear.

“Please, _please_ ,” he begged, “more.”

“Since you asked so nicely,” she answered pleasantly.

As she drew back, she ran her long-nailed hand down his chest, _hard_ , causing red marks to immediately rise up on the flesh as she squeezed her pelvic muscles and contracted them around his cock.

He heard himself make a sound somewhere between an exhale and a cry of ecstasy as he got lost in the sensations of Padme on top of him, surrounding him, riding him. All he could do was watch as she set a slow, tortuous pace, using her legs to raise herself so slowly and letting gravity bring her back down over and over again until he felt he would go insane from the combination of _too much_ and _not enough_. 

Anakin tried to use his legs as leverage to fuck up into her, but every time he tried, Padme would just slow down, almost stopping her movements completely until Anakin halted his efforts. She was in control and she had no issues about using his body for her pleasure, it seemed. 

He had no idea how much the prospect of being used was a turn on for him until tonight.

After an endless moment, something changed. Padme started going faster, all out bouncing on his cock and losing the rhythm she had previously had. Anakin took his chance and bent his knees, pushing with his feet in order to piston his hips up so he could finally leverage himself enough to actually fuck into the insanely gorgeous woman that was quickly losing herself to her pleasure while riding his cock like it belonged to her.

He had to bite his lip until it bled to stop from coming as soon as he finished that thought. He wanted to draw this out as long as he could, he wasn’t sure when he’d have a chance to have sex this wonderful ever again.

When Anakin saw Padme move her hand towards the juncture of her legs, something in him snapped. He tore through the restraint on his right wrist with the aid of the Force and reached for Padme’s arm, gently trying to move it away so his could take its place. After a moment of surprise, she relented.

Padme moaned loudly, her head falling back, hair cascading down her back and brushing the tops of Anakin’s thighs as his fingers delved into the wet heat of her folds, quickly finding her clit and gently rubbing it in time with their thrusts.

It took only moments for both of them to completely lose whatever control they had left. Padme was no longer moving up and down on his cock, instead circling her hips as she ground herself down into him in tight circles while Anakin made small, hard thrusts into the incredible heat of her, his fingers moving deftly and drawing small cries of pleasure from Padme.

All too soon Anakin felt his own orgasm approach, his balls tightening as tried, desperately, to stave it off until he could make sure Padme finished. He was many things, but a selfish lover he was not. He worked the fingers that were rubbing into Padme just a little bit faster, added just a little more pressure, while grinding his cock into her until he felt the inevitable flutter of the walls that gripped him, letting him know that she was finally right there on the edge with him.

And Anakin let go.

He felt the way her inner walls spasmed around him and when Padme herself collapsed on top of him through the haze of his own mind-blowing orgasm. He barely registered the filthy kiss she gave him as he felt his cock pulse inside of Padme over and over again until, finally, he was spent.

When he could finally think again, he felt Padme’s body draped over his, both of them panting loudly and making no attempt whatsoever to move at all. He felt so relaxed that he found himself never wanting to leave this bed.

Suddenly, Padme broke the silence between them, breathlessly saying, “Next time I tie you up, you better stay tied up.”

Anakin laughed as he gasped out, “I had to get you off. I couldn’t not make you come after the way you just fucked me,” he defended himself.

He felt Padme smile against his neck. “That’s not the point,” she said.

“Well, what _is_ the point then?” he asked, perplexed.

“The point is, if you want to do that again, you have to be willing to do what I say.”

Anakin’s thoughts came to a halt as he listened to Padme. “Do that again?” he asked, having to make sure he heard what he thought he heard.

This time, Padme outright laughed before telling him, “Well I for one am looking forward to seeing that look on your face as you come at least one more time.”

He tried to quell any feelings of self-consciousness her words caused him, replying, “Who am I to deny a Senator of the Republic?”

They laid together in companionable silence for a moment before Padme spoke again, this time her voice much less self-assured.

“Anakin…” she started, “You were okay with that, weren’t you?”

Anakin actually moved his head to look down at Padme in his confusion, asking “With the sex? Absolutely. Great. Magnificent. Honestly, couldn’t be better.”

Padme rose her head to meet his gaze, slapping his chest lightly as she replied, “No, you idiot. I meant with the whole me tying you up part.”

He gave the question some serious thought. Anakin had never tried doing anything like that before. In all honesty, sex, in general, wasn’t something he spent a lot of time thinking about. When he was in the mood, he found someone who was in a similar position and took care of it before getting back to his normal day-to-day routine.

It was still too soon to tell if he would always like doing it or if he was open to anything else like this, but he knew that he _liked_ what Padme had done to him. He liked it a lot.

So, he told her, “Yeah, I am. I didn’t think that would be something that I was into, but I was. Being able to look, but not touch, to not be the one in control of the situation honestly made it the hottest, most erotic experience I’ve had.”

“Good, I should’ve asked before I did it, but I was a little preoccupied,” she said sheepishly.

Anakin could feel himself getting tired, the long day spent traveling and the energy expended during their recent activities seeming to hit him all at once.

“Trust me, it’s not a problem,” he said groggily.

Padme rolled off of him, standing up and undressing herself as she cheekily told him, “I think I wore you out,” before adding, more seriously, “Go to sleep, Anakin.”

“What’re you doing?” he slurred, already halfway asleep.

“I’m just putting on some sleeping clothes,” her voice was muffled as she replied.

He must have nodded off because the next thing he knew, Padme was pulling the covers up around them and settling in on Anakin’s side, laying her head on shoulder as she said, “Sleep well, Anakin.”

“Mhmm,” he hummed, wrapping his arm around her, “with you here, I will.”

If Padme replied to him, Anakin had no idea. He was already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first smut scene, so be kind to me lol. Constructive criticism is always welcome. I'm on the ace spectrum, so sex scenes are almost harder than dialogue for me. Heads up: this is a Obikin endgame. So, there will only be like two more Anakin/Padme smut scenes, max. I'm ready to get to the good stuff, how bout y'all?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GEONOSIS! And a little bit of That’s-Not-How-The-Force Works via Anakin My-Middle-Name-Should-Be-Clueless Skywalker. Oh, and the loss of exactly half a limb. You’ve been warned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own Star Wars or any of the affiliated media. Unfortunately, the corporate demon known as Disney does. (Honestly, George, what was you thinkinnn?). 
> 
> Author’s Note: I wasn’t really happy with Chapter Four, but I’m hoping Chapter Five will be better. It feels better to me, but I also tend to overanalyze everything. This is the last AotC chapter (thank god!). Enjoy, y’all! Stay safe out there and Happy Hanukkah!

**Song:** [Last Resort – Papa Roach](https://youtu.be/Hm7vnOC4hoY). The [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1cMeGVZvk75Bh61t7TQZun) has been updated quite a bit. You can bitch at me about it on Tumblr ([trashpanda26](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/trashpanda26)).

**CHAPTER FIVE**

_22 BBY_

Anakin was meditating.

Or at least he was attempting to.

He had hoped that the calm, peaceful presence of Naboo’s Lake Country would aid him in his on-going quest to bolster his mental shielding. He figured that now, while he was on one of the most peaceful planets in the galaxy and far, far, away from any other Jedi was the perfect time to do a little experimenting. All of the information he had read told him that meditation was crucial to building more effective shielding techniques.

The problem was that Anakin couldn’t meditate. Not in the way these methods required, at least.

So, for the last two weeks that he had been secluded with Padme in her Varykino estate, he came out, every day, to this grassy clearing that was almost completely enclosed by the greenery of low hanging trees where the rush of the numerous waterfalls that littered the area could be faintly heard in the background. It reminded Anakin of the Room of a Thousand Fountains, only completely natural, no sentients needed to construct the serene surroundings he now frequented.

If he were being honest with himself, Anakin was also using this place as a retreat from the conflicted feelings that arose anytime he was around Padme. They had repeatedly found themselves falling into bed together, but Anakin couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in over his head. What was he doing, bedding a Senator of the Republic while he was supposed to be protecting her from the very real threat against her life? He could only imagine Obi-Wan’s disappointment if he ever found out.

However much he was conflicted about it, Anakin found that he couldn’t stop. He didn’t _want_ to stop, was the issue. He found himself wanting this, the connection, the release, more than he wanted to stop feeling the contradictory emotions. He knew that it wasn’t healthy, that it wasn’t right, that it didn’t follow the Code, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care about any of those things lately.

So, when he started feeling too much, when he couldn’t get lost in Padme to distract himself, or whenever he started feeling particularly edgy which seemed to be happening with increasing frequency lately, Anakin came out to what he had deemed his spot and put more effort than he ever had into meditating the Jedi way.

He suddenly missed Obi-Wan fiercely. This was the longest they had been away from each other in the ten years he had been apprenticed to the man. Sometimes, he found himself sending random surges of emotion through the bond, as was his habit when he was bored or just wanted to bother Obi-Wan, only to be reminded of his Master’s absence as the emotions just fizzled out, disappearing into the yawning void between their minds that reflected the lightyears between them.

Obi-Wan would’ve been able to help him meditate. He would’ve sat down next to Anakin and opened up their connection so wide that Anakin could follow his Master’s own descent into serenity, allowing Anakin to achieve a state of mind closer to meditation than any he had been able to achieve so far.

Instead, his Master was Force knows where, probably in danger, attempting to figure out who was trying to kill the woman he had been enthusiastically sleeping with for the past two weeks.

He released his conflicted feelings into the Force with an efficiency that hinted at the repetitive nature of the action. He had had a lot of practice doing that lately. Usually, he had a hard time releasing emotions into the Force, but this time he had more important things to do than brood over his ambiguous emotions.

He tried, once again, to keep his mind in his physical body while also letting it wander into the binding energy of the Force around him. 

This was the perfect time and location to try to do this. There was nothing for him to worry about demolishing in case he lost his hold on the Force and completely dissociated into it, causing another explosion of energy that would draw every Jedi around if he were to attempt doing this in the Temple.

He would get so close, almost balanced on the precipice the Jedi meditation was all about when his thoughts would start up again, ruining his previously cleared mind.

After a few days, Anakin had realized just what was causing his mind to self-sabotage.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to his mother.

Between locking himself in his room to binge read and his latest assignment, Anakin hadn’t had much time to process what had happened to him and what he had done in response. Other than clinging to Obi-Wan that night as he cried, Anakin hadn’t acknowledged or grieved for what had happened at all.

He found he couldn’t now either. Instead, Anakin just felt angry.

He had mostly moved past his anger at Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan was the only person who knew what had happened besides the Chancellor. Or the gist of it, anyway. He hadn’t believed in Anakin’s visions or been supportive of him going to find out what happened, but he had apologized, and he had comforted Anakin in a way that he knew Obi-Wan would’ve found intrusive if it were anyone besides _him_ seeking that comfort. Anakin wasn’t over the other man’s dismissal completely, but he had let go of his resentment toward his Master. He loved his Master far too much to hold on to any kind of negative emotions toward him for any length of time.

Now that Anakin had had a few weeks to really process what had happened, he found a whole list of people to be mad at. Number one on that list was himself. Any time his mind started to wander during the day he endured an endless litany of _Why didn’t he get there sooner?_ _Why didn’t the Force let him know what was going on? Why didn’t he find a way to defy the Council and go back and visit at least once? Why didn’t he fight to at least send a message to her? Why didn’t, Why didn’t, Why didn’t_ … and on and on it went for days until he found a new target for his anger.

He was glad he was on Naboo, light years away from the Temple, when he suddenly found himself incandescently angry with the Jedi one day. He had always had a low, ever-present level of resentment toward the Order for their hypocritical Code, but now it was far more personal. Their insistence on detachment prevented him from having any kind of interaction with his mother, his _enslaved_ mother, whom he had left to join the Jedi without fully realizing the consequences of his actions. He had had no idea that that morning more than ten years ago would be the last time he saw or spoke to her before finding her as she was dying.

For a few days, he thought his anger toward the Jedi had cooled but, instead, it had just found a new source. He didn’t think he could feel both that enraged and that guilty to the magnitude of what he felt toward the Sand People, but he did. He _hated_ them. He hated them more than he had ever hated anything in his entire life. More than he had hated Gardulla, or Watto, or any other being in the entire galaxy. What they had done to her was unspeakable. He could barely think of the torture she had gone through for weeks before he had found her. It was a miracle that he had even been able to have those last rushed, gasped out words from her, he realized in hindsight. She had been so incredibly weak and fevered, the infection from her back had no doubt spread by the time he had found her.

In his darkest hours, when the images wouldn’t leave his mind as he tried and failed to sleep, Anakin wished he could go back and kill them all again.

However, his guilt was almost as strong as his anger. He remembered the moment he lost his iron-clad control of the Force, the shock of feeling his mother dying causing him to almost dissociate automatically in what he now recognized was a familiar defense mechanism meant to spare him from the reality of what had happened. He remembered the explosion alarming him, stopping him from completely losing himself even as he felt the energy pass through him and radiate out in a destructive wave that left nothing alive in its wake.

He remembered the horror he felt at realizing that not just the men, but the women and the children were all dead too. He had killed them all.

That was the hardest part to get past for him. Anakin was a murderer now, no matter what the Chancellor had said to him as he tried to reassure and comfort him. He’d never forget the smell of burning flesh as he piled the too-small-too-thin-too-many corpses on a makeshift pyre. He’d never hated himself more than in that moment.

Even if he hadn’t lost control of himself and wiped out the village and its inhabitants, he had made a decision to kill the two males that had surprised him in the hut. He had let his rage, his grief, and his hatred control him and Anakin had succumbed to them in turn, needing to hurt someone as bad as he had been hurting in that moment. That those two males were also probably coming into the hut for something Anakin didn’t even want to think about was just more fuel for his murderous rage. He tried to feel some sort of remorse for those two deaths now that he was removed from the situation. He failed.

Eventually, Anakin managed to get to a place where he thought he had worked through the bulk of his anger. But he couldn’t find the balance needed to meditate, even his own version of meditation was eluding him at this point. He was in the most peaceful location he had ever imagined and had done more self-reflection in the last two weeks than he had ever done in his entire life. If he wasn’t able to meditate now, he despaired of _ever_ learning how to do it properly. 

So, he tried something different.

Instead of seeking to connect with the Force around him, Anakin focused on the spark of Force within himself, his Life Force. Separated but still attached to the Unifying Force, his Life Force was his oldest friend. He had always felt it within himself, but it wasn’t until he was initiated into the Order that he realized that there was a difference between the spark inside of him and the Force that flowed through everything. It felt the same to him, but other people’s Life Force tended to be distinctly different compared to the Force itself. Anakin had never been all that interested in finding out why his felt indistinguishable from the actual Force, chalking it up to not being able to tell the difference because feeling your own Life Force just felt different from feeling someone else’s.

Anakin brought his mind back to the present as he very carefully sunk his consciousness into his Life Force within himself.

The first thing he thought was that he was very glad he had decided to do this in a remote place because he was actually pretty certain he was levitating right now. Levitation wasn’t exactly conducive to being on a discreet protection mission he thought somewhat hysterically.

He could levitate himself, of course. It was one of the more basic exercises that padawans learned in order to refine their Force control. Usually, the exercise progressed by adding increasingly difficult items to levitate concurrently while keeping yourself in the air.

This was not anything like that exercise. As soon as he sunk into his own Life Force, the energy almost ballooned in response, pushing out of him for a few feet in each direction which was, what he assumed, causing his current situation.

But what really grabbed his attention was the way it felt.

Peace like he had never known encompassed him as soon as he got over his shock at finding himself hovering above the ground. Following Obi-Wan’s progression of his own meditation through their bond was a pale imitation of the serenity, the contentedness, the absolute surety of purpose that he was consumed by.

There was no pain, no grief, no anger, no guilt in his mind. There was only the Force.

Anakin vaguely registered that there were tears running down his face.

For an endless amount of time, he drifted. He could remember no purpose beyond feeling, beyond experiencing this singular moment in time and enjoying it while he could. Because, subconsciously, he realized this wouldn’t last forever and he had no idea if this state was something he could repeat.

He had no idea how much time had passed before he regained any sense of conscious thought. As he gradually pulled his mind back into a singular entity, gathering the threads of it from where it was happily intertwined with his own Life Force, he focused on what he was trying to achieve by attempting to meditate in the first place. This wasn’t the traditional Jedi meditation, but Anakin had a feeling that his way newly found method of meditating would allow him to try and strengthen his weak excuse for mental shields.

So, Anakin went about the slow process of tearing down his feeble shields, once again glad that he was the only Jedi around this area, maybe even on the planet itself. He hadn’t been this defenseless, mentally, since the last time he had the Corellian Flu and ended up in the Healer’s wing because of fever induced hallucinations. As vulnerable as it made him feel to be completely open to his surroundings with nothing between his mind and the galaxy, he felt extremely comfortable within the confines of what he had taken to mentally calling his Force Bubble.

Just as he pulled down the last of his failing shielding, Anakin was overtaken by another Force vision.

It took him a long moment to get over his shock. He had _never_ had a Force vision while he was awake. 

Then he recognized what the Force was showing him, and he felt his stomach drop horribly.

Obi-Wan was in front of him, on some rocky, desert planet facing his speeder and talking to Arfour. He was sending a message it sounded like from the cadence of his voice. Anakin couldn’t make out what exactly was being said, his Master’s words were muffled by the wind whipping around them and the distance. But Anakin wasn’t focused on whatever his Master was talking about. He was too fixated on the strange, chitinous beings that were sneaking up on his apparently distracted and unaware Master.

“Master!” Anakin cried uselessly, knowing that he wasn’t really there, he couldn’t really warn Obi-Wan but needing desperately to try anyway, “Obi-Wan!” he tried again.

He watched helplessly as the winged bug-like beings crept closer to his Master until _finally_ Obi-Wan must have sensed something since he turned with his ‘saber lit to fend off the multiple attacks coming at him now.

As suddenly as the vision came upon him, it was gone. Anakin was still surprised to find that he was encased in his Force Bubble. He had thought the shock would’ve broken whatever concentration he had that was necessary for its existence. Already the calming effect of being surrounded by his own Life Force was slowly seeping away the anxiety and worry he had felt for his Master just then until he could barely remember an echo of it.

Instead, Anakin turned his attention back to his shields. He felt a strong sense of importance attached to the task, probably a nudge from the Force now that he really thought about it. The Force wanting him to protect himself made sense. Especially considering the way the vision coincided with the fall of his last shield. He wondered if he would keep getting visions if he left them down for a while and felt the faintest sense of horror at the thought of being so consumed by never ending visions bombarding his defenseless mind that he immediately began to rebuild the foundations for his newer, stronger shields in an attempt to avoid that possibility.

He tried very hard to remember everything that he had read and incorporate it into his new shields. However, his mind seemed to not want to cooperate as it ignored most of what he had read and instead seemed to build them from a combination of instinct and technique he had read about. Instead of winding threads of the Force and his own mental signature together to defend his mind, sections of his Life Force wove together and formed a dense, almost opaque sphere. In fact, the only point where his Life Force’s shielding wasn’t present was the small section where the threads that connected him to Obi-Wan met his psyche and wove its golden strands throughout his mind.

When it finally seemed like his Life Force was done taking the reins, yet again, he took stock of just how much his mind had changed in what felt like a short amount of time. Everything wasn’t fixed yet. He knew he still had some major things to work through. He knew it would hurt. But, right now, safe in his mind, he was so far removed from it that it didn’t feel like carrying boulders on his shoulders anymore. Right now, all he wanted to do was take in the calm feeling that was radiating from _him_ , from _him_ of all people.

He still had a lot of work to do, both inside his mind, building upon the foundations he now had, and out there, where his body was still levitating and where he knew he needed to return to.

He gave himself a small moment to appreciate what he had achieved and how nice everything felt here. He knew it would be a while before he felt this wonderfully at peace again, if ever.

~~

Anakin opened his eyes, breathing in the clear night air of Naboo’s Lake Country.

He was still floating, he realized. For a second, he panicked as he couldn’t figure out how to get down. Then he remembered how he had ended up in this position and slowly, carefully, pulled his Living Force back inside his body from where it had expanded around him.

 _That was weird_ , he thought.

He had never heard of any other Jedi or Force user doing what he had just done. He didn’t think it was possible for someone’s Life Force to leave the confines of their body. Then again, everything about him and his use of the Force was _weird_. He tried not to think about it too much, honestly.

After he came to rest on the dewy grass, Anakin slowly got up and stretched the stiffness out of his limbs. When looked up into the dark night and saw the three moons high in the night sky, he realized why he was so stiff – he had been sitting out there for over half the day.

He immediately started jogging back to the villa they were staying at, slightly worried about what could have happened while he had been away. He was supposed to be here on protection duty, not a meditative retreat after all. Even isolated as they were in the Lake Country, there was no guarantee that bounty hunters couldn’t track them down.

Anakin opened up his senses as soon as he saw the villa, wanting to be prepared just in case anything _did_ go wrong while he was gone. He really should’ve taken his comm unit with him, but he hadn’t really thought he’d need it with how close he tended to stay and the relatively short length of his attempts to meditate. He let out a sigh of relief when all he felt was Padme’s presence, even though it was decidedly anxious and worried. That was more than likely his fault for staying out well past the time he usually came back.

His guess was proven correct as Padme rushed toward him as soon as he came through the doorway of the large lounging room, pulling him into a tight, worried hug before stepping back and lightly slapping his chest, sternly telling him, “Don’t scare me like that. I was worried!”

Anakin just chuckled a little, wrapping his arms around her before telling her seriously, “I’m sorry Padme, something happened, and I lost track of time.”

“What? Are you okay?” she asked stepping out of his arms to look him up and down in a scrutinizing manner.

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. I was just meditating, and something strange happened,” he brushed her off as he made his way to the kitchen, suddenly aware of just how hungry meditating for half of the day had left him.

Padme followed after him and sat down across the table from where Anakin had put together a large plate of leftovers, waiting until he had practically inhaled half of his food before telling him, “Your comm unit has been going off the past hour or so, by the way.”

Anakin suddenly remembered the vision of his Master being attacked while sending a transmission and choked on his food.

“Anakin!” Padme yelled, coming over to hit him on his back in a frantic attempt to help him.

After a moment, Anakin regained enough composure to use a small amount of Force to dislodge the food stuck in his throat, wheezing out, “I’m alright… ‘m fine!”

She looked at him like he had lost his mind before asking, “What was that all about?”

Anakin tried to shove his embarrassment down as contemplated telling her for a second before giving her a half truth, not ready to talk about visions considering the way they had been evolving lately, “I was just surprised,” he said, “I wasn’t expecting anyone to contact us this soon. It’s probably the Council with news about the investigation.”

Which meant he should probably go and see what the message said, he realized.

He was already up and quickly walking toward where he left his comm unit that morning, breaking out into a cold sweat as he started to get anxious. He had a bad feeling about this.

Anakin pressed the button on his comm to play the message that had been waiting there and felt himself blanch as he saw Obi-Wan and that same rocky desert landscape from his vision behind him.

Acrid fear gripped him as he watched the holomessage of his Master. He could barely hear him relaying information about Count Dooku, of all people, over the sound of his heart hammering away.

“… have pledged their armies to Count Dooku and are forming an… Wait!” his Master’s words cut off as the bug-like creatures came into view, swarming his Master just as the message cut off.

“Sithspit!” Anakin cursed.

His mind was frantic. Not only was he frustratingly worried about his Master, but Anakin couldn’t understand why his visions were no longer of the past anymore, but either of the present or the very near future. He didn’t understand and he didn’t have time to try and figure out the answer because Obi-Wan was most definitely in trouble.

In trouble and so very _alone_ , he realized.

“I’m going after him!” Anakin suddenly declared into the silence that had descended after Obi-Wan’s holographic image had disappeared.

Padme’s brow was scrunched in thought as she reminded him, “Obi-Wan wanted you to retransmit the message to Coruscant.”

“Of course, of course… you’re right,” he said, already in the process of doing just that.

Anakin felt helpless as he listened to Master Windu tell him to stay put after he had transmitted Obi-Wan’s message to the Council. He couldn’t do anything but agree to Windu’s demands, trapped as he was by being Padme’s sole source of protection while he wanted nothing more than to go after his Master.

He was brought out of his brooding by Padme’s quiet observation, “They’ll never get to him in time. Coruscant is halfway across the galaxy from Geonosis.”

Anakin watched as she grabbed a datapad and projected a star map before continuing, “Look how much closer Naboo is to Geonosis. We could probably get there a full day ahead of the Jedi if we left right now.”

“If he’s still alive,” Anakin said morosely.

“Are you just going to let him die? Will you not even try to save him? I thought he was your friend… your mentor?” Padme asked him accusingly.

“He’s the closest person to me!” he cried, “I want nothing more than to fly straight to Geonosis and find him! But you heard Master Windu,” he said plaintively, “He gave me an order to stay here. I would undoubtedly get in serious trouble if I disobeyed, not to mention the risks of endangering you in the process.”

Anakin realized that if he did go to Geonosis, he would absolutely get thrown out of the Order when they eventually found out about his earlier clandestine trip to Tatooine. One major instance of insubordination he might be able to see them forgiving, but two? No chance. And they would find out about his trip to Tatooine, of that Anakin had no doubt. Obi-Wan wouldn’t keep that to himself for long, he thought.

 _But,_ his mind whispered, _does being a Jedi matter more to you than Obi-Wan’s life? Does this mission mean more to you than his life? The life of the only person to stick up for you, who raised you, who taught you, put up with you, protected you?_

 _No_ , he realized with sudden clarity, _Obi-Wan was worth more than any mission, more than anything_.

Padme must have seen the look on his face because her sudden declaration saved him from voicing his damning decision, “Master Windu gave you strict orders to protect me…” she looked at him and gave a sly smirk that oddly fit her often-times serious features, “and I’m going to save Obi-Wan. So, if you want to complete that protection mission they insisted on, you’ll just have to come along.”

Anakin gave her a blinding smile as he, for the first time since seeing Obi-Wan’s holomessage, felt a spark of hope. They both looked at each other, grinning, for a long moment before jumping into action, preparing for their trip to Geonosis.

~~

Anakin really had no idea how things had gone wrong so fast.

They had made it to Geonosis and landed without any issues. Everything was going well enough until they were captured and brought before Count Dooku and some kind of Geonosian court that had declared them to be spies and summarily ordered their execution. Just like they did to his Master, he had eventually gathered.

_Jedi! Traitors? Spies? And sentencing a Senator of the Republic to public execution as well? What was the Count playing at?_

Anakin didn’t understand how Count Dooku, ex-Jedi that he was, could sentence Obi-Wan, someone from his own lineage that he had known, at least in passing, while he was still with the Order, to a public execution. There were too many important pieces missing for Anakin to even halfway make sense of the plot they found themselves in the middle of. Not that it mattered now, since he expected he wouldn’t be alive long enough to figure it out.

Now Padme and he were standing in some kind of chariot waiting to be taken out into an arena where their deaths would be watched and viewed as some kind of sick entertainment by thousands of these bug-like creatures.

He was too shocked to be scared of what was about to happen, unlike Padme, whose uneasy, anxious feelings were radiating out in the Force no matter how strong the façade she put up to try to hide them.

“Don’t be afraid,” he tried to console her.

“I’m not afraid to die,” she said, turning to look at him.

As the chariot started moving through the tunnel that undoubtedly opened up into the arena, Anakin looked into Padme’s eyes, saying, “You feel anxious. Worried. What are you afraid of, if not dying?”

“I’m afraid of what I’ve been feeling. I’m afraid of what I finally realized, here, on this planet, as we’re being taken to our deaths,” she said earnestly, gazing at him with an intensity he didn’t understand. 

Anakin was confused and still in shock from the events leading up to their current predicament. He had to turn away from her unflinching gaze, almost uncomfortable from the strength of it. They were nearly at the end of the tunnel and Anakin’s eyes were nearly blinded by the sun as he tried to search for Obi-Wan in the open, sandy arena.

Padme’s next words caused Anakin’s head to almost audibly snap back to the Senator by his side.

“I think I love you,” she said.

Anakin’s mind couldn’t process Padme’s heartfelt declaration. It was too much, he thought, as everything over the last few weeks hit him at once.

He couldn’t breathe. He opened his mouth to reply but no sound came out.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said, eyes sad but voice steady, “I can’t control how I feel. Our lives are probably about to be destroyed anyway. I love you and, before we die, I just wanted you to know.”

“Padme…” he said, looking down at and watching the first rays of sunlight hit her face as they made it to the end of the tunnel.

She leaned up as best as she could and gave him a quick, hard kiss before turning back towards the arena that they were now entering.

Anakin could do nothing but imitate Padme, turning to face the place that would probably be the death of them. As his eyes finally adjusted to the sunlight, he made out three large pillars that had chains hanging down the length of them. At the bottom of one of them was his Master.

He felt a brief surge of joy at finally seeing Obi-Wan. However, that hope was short lived as he realized his Master was in the same situation as Padme and him, which didn’t exactly bode well for their chances at getting out of here.

As their chariot got closer to the pillars, Anakin felt the bond between them open up just a bit on Obi-Wan’s side, a mixture of _relief-worry-anger_ hitting him hard enough to make his eyes water. All he could do was stare at his Master as they finally stopped in front of the central pillar, the guard pulling on his chains to get him moving.

As the Geonosian roughly grabbed Anakin’s manacled hands and brought them above his head to connect them to the long chain hanging down on the pillar, Obi-Wan finally spoke, his sarcastic voice carrying over the distance between them, “I was beginning to wonder if you had gotten my message.”

Anakin felt his face burning as he answered, “I retransmitted it like you requested, Master,” he ground out, gulping before continuing, “Then we decided to come and rescue you.”

Obi-Wan just stared at him for a moment, one eyebrow raised disbelievingly, motioning his head toward his own chained arms above him as he acerbically replied, “Good job!”

Anakin felt, for a split second, that his shame would eat him alive before he got ahold of it. He tried to achieve that peaceful state that he had somehow managed to find by delving into his own Life Force and was only mildly successful considering he was in the middle of his own execution and didn’t feel safe enough to truly repeat the process. Obi-Wan must have felt something shift in him since his Master whipped his head toward him, eyes wide in surprise.

Feeling much calmer after getting himself back under control, Anakin ignored the unintelligible announcements being blared through the arena and watched as three of the large gates that dotted the circumference of the arena started to open, feeling the presence of three very large and very angry lifeforms on the other side.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he called out to Obi-Wan.

He could feel his Master’s agreement across the bond as a reek, a nexu and an _acklay_ of all things stalked out into the arena, snarling and chittering at the guards who were employing electrostaves in order to herd them toward their intended targets - _them_.

“You take the reek and I’ll take the acklay?” Obi-Wan said with forced nonchalance.

Anakin sent a wave of worried acknowledgment through the bond while absently asking aloud, “What about Padme?”

He could feel Obi-Wan’s impressed amusement as he replied, “She seems to be on top of things.”

Turning to look at Padme, Anakin found himself feeling equally impressed. While they were wasting time talking, Padme had scaled the pillar and seemed to be working on unshackling herself.

 _She’s always been incredibly resourceful_ , he thought warmly.

Feeling the ground beneath his feet start to shake, Anakin’s attention was brought toward the reek that was now charging all out in his direction, head held low in order to gore him with its sharp protruding horns.

He didn’t have much time to think after that.

~~

Anakin felt numb as he looked around at the small circle that the Jedi had been reduced to.

Hundreds of Jedi had come to the arena to rescue Obi-Wan, Padme, and him, and only a handful were left standing shoulder to shoulder with them. He had never seen or felt so much death in such a short time and it left a void in the Force that was starting to actually _hurt_ him.

He barely registered Count Dooku’s self-righteous, aristocratic voice addressing them and Master Windu’s defiant reply. He was so hyperaware, all his senses turned up to the maximum, trying to get his breathing under control and his hands to stop shaking around his borrowed ‘saber.

“Look!” Padme called out, pointing toward the southern sky.

Anakin felt a hysterical laugh get caught in his throat when he saw just what Padme was pointing at.

 _Ships_ , he thought. _Battle ships with people on them_. _With_ Jedi _on them_.

 _They weren’t going to die here_ , he realized.

The ships descended and formed a perimeter around the Jedi, armored men stepping out to shoot at the droids who had resumed their firing.

Anakin looked at their rescuers in a muted sort of awe, absently deflecting stray blaster fire. He was still having a hard time believing that they were going to make it out of the cursed arena.

“Anakin! Come on!” he heard Obi-Wan call for him.

He automatically started moving toward his Master, boarding the vessel as he scanned the area to locate Padme only to realize she was on the gunship too.

“Where did these men come from?” he asked as he felt the ship lurch during its takeoff.

“It’s a long story,” Obi-Wan yelled over the sound of the repulsor engines, “They’re clones from Kamino. I stumbled upon them during my investigation into the Senator’s would-be-assassin. It looks like the Council made use of them after all. To our benefit it seems.”

Anakin looked out of the sides of the gunship to see hundreds of other identical ships, all piloted by clones, no doubt. _How many clones were there?_ he wondered. _Obi-Wan just happened upon a clone army right in time to save them all from certain death_ and _when it’s looking like the Republic will be under attack from Dooku’s droid army?_

The Force was so clouded by the death that surrounded them on all sides that it made his head spin as he tried to think through what his Master had just told him and all its implications. Anakin couldn’t help but feel that this clone army situation was much more complicated than it seemed on the surface. _Plots within plots_ , he thought cynically.

Suddenly, Anakin felt a disturbance in the Force.

Obi-Wan felt it too and was quicker at distinguishing its cause, pointing to the speeder that was racing past a group of gunships as he said, “Look over there! That’s Count Dooku!”

“Follow him!” Anakin shouted to the pilots.

Just as the ship started veering off its original course to move toward the speeder, the gunship next to them exploded in a fiery blast, causing their own ship to lurch violently. Anakin watched, frozen, as Padme and a clone were thrown from the ship.

“PADME!” he yelled frantically.

As he watched her fall and roll down the sandy hill, all Anakin could think about was Padme’s family. Padme’s wonderfully emotional, caring, loving family. He thought about Ruwee, who had made a point to try to understand the dangers that his daughter regularly faced and had begged him to watch out for her, to protect her. He thought about her young nieces who worshiped the ground Padme walked on. He thought about how devasted they all would be if Padme died on this Sithspawn planet because she had had the courage to act when Anakin’s hands were tied by choosing to come here and attempt to save Obi-Wan’s life.

He didn’t think he’d be able to take it if one more person he knew died right now.

“Put the ship down!” he ordered.

Obi-Wan’s sharp, stinging disapproval practically leapt at him through their bond, wide open on Anakin’s end from the never-ending blows of the day.

“No!” his Master countermanded his order before turning to face him, “We have to go after Dooku!”

“We can’t leave her!” he desperately tried to reason with his Master.

“Don’t let your personal feelings get in the way! We have a job to do, Anakin!” Obi-Wan shouted at him.

Anakin fell silent as he tried to think past his worry. He felt Obi-Wan’s own shock and desperation through the bond as he tried to look back to where Padme fell to try and get some idea of her wellbeing.

Obi-Wan must have felt his indeciveness in the bond because he reached out suddenly to grab Anakin’s upper arm and look him in the eyes, pleading, “I can’t face Dooku alone, Anakin! I need you!”

All he could do was stare at his Master in shock. He had never heard Obi-Wan say he _needed_ him and something inside Anakin was deeply, darkly pleased at his Master’s confession. He felt the desperation coming from his Master and made up his mind.

Hadn’t he already decided that Obi-Wan’s life was worth more than Padme’s protection? Padme was resourceful and she hadn’t seemed to be injured by her fall. And she had a clone with her that undoubtedly could comm a ship to pick them up. She would be fine. Obi-Wan, however, wouldn’t be fine facing one of the most accomplished ‘saber masters in the Order’s history by himself. His Master needed him, truly needed him, he realized in a daze.

He saw Obi-Wan exhale in relief as he felt Anakin’s resolve before shouting to the pilot, “Follow that speeder!”

Anakin tried to focus on the upcoming fight as he watched the speeder descend and disappear to dock inside of a large hangar in front of them. Obi-Wan’s mental presence was so preoccupied that it was distracting Anakin, prompting him to try and tighten his new, untested shields, extending them to partially block the bond that was transmitting Obi-Wan’s unsteady emotions. He had no idea if his efforts had worked or not before their ship was hovering over the landing platform on the side of the hangar, allowing them to jump off the ship before it rejoined its counterparts in the increasingly large ground battle to the west of the hangar.

They cautiously made their way to the hangar’s interior, following the sick, twisted Force presence of the Count. They found him standing, waiting for them in the center of the cavernous ship bay with that irritatingly superior expression on his face.

Anakin was consumed by a fierce and sudden hatred toward this man in front of him. Count Dooku had been Qui-Gon’s Master and Obi-Wan’s Grandmaster. The man had tried to kill two people from his lineage and had no problem with ordering the slaughter of hundreds of Jedi today. How many of those dead Jedi were people that Dooku had known? How many had he trained with or taught at one point? Couldn’t he feel the way the Force ached with each loss? The void that his actions today had caused? Did he even care?

Lost in his own rage, he barely recognized his own voice yelling out, “You’ll pay for all the Jedi you killed today, Dooku!”

Obi-Wan sent him a dose of caution, barely felt through his partially raised shields, as he quietly said, “We’ll take him together…”

But Anakin’s anger was a living, writhing thing inside of him, not allowing him to wait and hear his Master’s strategy. Instead, he eagerly rushed toward the Count with his ‘saber held high, feeling a burning need to bring this traitor the only justice he deserved.

He realized his own folly too late as he was swiftly and suddenly electrocuted by his opponent.

Pain unlike anything Anakin had known flowed through him in an unending deluge of misery. His mind absently supplied that Dooku was using Force lightning, a _Sith_ power, on him as he writhed in agony, suspended in the air by Dooku’s power before his smoking body was carelessly tossed aside.

 _That’s the second time I’ve been electrocuted this month_ , he thought to himself distantly, nearly out of his mind from the combination of pain and the smell of his own burning flesh finally reaching his nose.

Obi-Wan’s sudden pain cut through his shock, causing his eyes to fly open as he watched Dooku run his ‘saber across his Master’s thigh before kicking the same limb, causing Obi-Wan to collapse on the floor in front of the Count. Anakin could only watch in horror as Dooku raised his own bright red ‘saber to deliver the killing blow before he _pulled_ on the Force around him, using it to strengthen his weakened body just enough to jump across the distance between them and put his body between his Master and the fallen Jedi in front of him, his arms shaking as he met Dooku’s swing with his borrowed ‘saber.

Dooku glared at him over the blinding light of their crossed ‘sabers as he said, “That was bold of you, boy. Bold, but foolish. I would have thought you learnt your lesson.”

Anakin was already feeling his borrowed strength leave him as sarcastically replied, “I _am_ a slow learner.”

He felt his Master’s mental presence brush along his shields before he called out to him, “Anakin!”

Already turning after deflecting the Count’s latest blow, Anakin caught the ‘saber his Master threw at him, his Djem So form unerringly slipping into a Jar’Kai variant of Ataru to better respond to Dooku’s crisp Makashi. He tried to pull more of the Force into himself to bolster his waning strength, knowing that he was the only thing that stood between Obi-Wan and death, feeling the weight of that responsibility even as he tried desperately to keep himself alive.

For a while, it worked. Anakin was able to keep the Count at bay, not gaining ground, but not losing it either. Until suddenly it wasn’t enough. The Count had just been toying with him, Anakin realized in horror as the blows started coming too fast for him to counter. Suddenly, the ‘saber in his left hand was destroyed by Dooku’s blade before Anakin felt the Force send him a sharp, urgent warning.

 _Too late_ , he thought numbly.

Anakin saw more than felt the Count’s red blade cut through his right arm just below the elbow. He only had a split second to process the fact that he had just lost his ‘saber arm before a supernova of _tearing-agony-burning_ consumed all conscious thought for an endless moment. As he fought his way through the miasma of pain, he realized the futility the action. Dooku had him in his unwavering Force grip, flinging him across the hangar like a ragdoll toward Obi-Wan’s prone body.

 _I’m sorry, Master_ , he thought as he got a glance of Obi-Wan’s tense, pain filled face.

When the blackness rushed up, Anakin was more than glad to meet it halfway.

He was unconscious before he hit the floor.


End file.
